
Class D V -1 ,^ C 

Book J (p 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 

The Christian According TO Paul: John T. Paris 
Psalms of the Social Life: Cleland B. McAfee 
The Many-Sided David : Philip E. Howard 
Meeting the Master: Ozora S. Davis 
Under THE Highest Leadership: John Douglas Adam 
A Living Book in a Living Age: Lynn Harold Hough 
How God Calls Men : Prederick Harris 
Marks of a World Christian: Daniel Johnson Pleming 
Other volumes to be announced later 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 



Marks of a World Christian 



DANIEL JOHNSON FLEMING 

Professor of Missions, Union Theological Seminary 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York : 347 Madison Avenue 
1919 






o\ 



Copyright, 1919, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



The Bible Text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard 
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and 
is used by permission. 

FE[? -8 1919 

©CI.A5 1J518 



TO 
MY SISTER LOIS 



FOREWORD 

Internationalism has always been implicit in Christianity. 
During three great eras of Christian expansion this inter- 
nationalism became consciously explicit in the Churches out- 
reach to non-Christian lands. An analysis of the missionary 
consciousness back of these great movements ought to yield 
certain fundamental elements that should characterize every 
Christian. We turn to what, historically, has been Chris- 
tianity's highest expression in order to see more clearly the 
mind which each Christian should bring to bear upon the 
world. 

Throughout this little book it has been assumed that, ideally, 
there is no difference between the Christian and the world 
Christian. Being a Christian is not a matter of the here or 
the there of an act or an attitude, but refers to a certain 
characteristic response which is independent of geography. 

It is hoped that these studies will help both individuals and 
churches in self-examination. The analysis found in these 
successive chapters does not attempt to be exhaustive, but 
certain outstanding elements have been chosen for considera- 
tion. One or another of these nine "marks" will probably 
need emphasized development, in order that the spirit which 
we bring to the world's great problems may be both Christian 
and international. 

D. J. F. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword vii 

I. Consciousness of the Larger Self i 

II. Respect for the Capacity of Other Peoples .... 23 

III. Responsiveness to Human Need 47 

IV. Faith in the Pursuant Love of God 72 

V. The Impulsion of a Great Experience 88 

VI. Zeal for the Manifestation of God no 

VII. Courage for World Purposes 132 

VIII. Readiness to Pay the Cost 154 

IX. ; A Sense of Vocation 178 



CHAPTER I 

Consciousness of the Larger Self 

Indissolubly knit together are myself, other folks, and God. 
This triangular relationship is characterized by a very real 
solidarity. To this living, vital, interpenetrating organism is 
given the name, the larger self. Now a consciousness of this 
interrelatedness and interdependence of life is one essential 
for a great new constructive era. Let us first consider this 
truth in the form of an ancient analogy. 

DAILY READINGS 

First Week, First Day : The Family of God 

He made of one every nation of men to dwell on all 
the face of the earth, having determined their appointed 
seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they 
should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and 
find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for 
in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain 
even of your own poets have said, 

For we are also his offspring. — Acts 17:26-28. 

In these verses is made one of the great generalizations 
with reference to mankind. However, long before this decla- 
ration of the essential unity of the human race in one great 
family or household, we find that occasional prophetic minds 
were thinking in terms of humanity. It is worth while to 
read right through the thirty-two verses of names and peoples 
found in the tenth chapter of Genesis in order to come from 
this to the first verse of the next chapter. The religious value 
of that long list of names is in the realization that all races 
of the earth belong to the same great family and are really 
kinsmen. There is one family of God — not many. 

Have we ever seriously considered the obligation arising 
from this great truth? It involves an international community 
of interests and responsibilities, an international fellowship 
in gain and loss, in honor and dishonor. When men say with 



[1-2] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Meredith Townsend that ''something radical, something un- 
alterable and indestructible, divides the Asiatic from the 
European, . . . they are fenced off from each other by an 
invisible, impalpable, but impassable wall as rigid and inflexible 
as that which divides the master from his dog,"^ they are 
forming the background in thought for racial war. It is the 
denial of the implications of mankind's unity in one family 
that makes nationalism dangerous. On the other hand, the 
thorough-going acceptance of those implications would crowd 
out selfish suspicion and aggression, while dignifying and 
ennobling national individuality and attainment. Success in 
the acceptance of the truth may be tested by the mutual atti- 
tudes between peoples. 

It is a growing realization of this truth that is causing 
a gradual disuse of the word "foreign" in connection with 
missions. With one blood, one human family, there can be 
no sharp line between obligation to community, to nation, and 
to the world. It is that larger outreach, however, which we 
have known as foreign missions, that preeminently makes its 
great heroic venture on the fundamental soundness of the 
postulate of today's teaching. Foreign missionaries act on 
the conviction that the solidarity of the human race in God's 
family is true ; they thereby become the most powerful agents 
for creating the realization of that truth. 

The intelligent assimilation of the truth as to the essential 
unity of the human race on the part of any individual or 
group, is a real attainment. When can it be said of us, as of 
Jesus: *'He is not ashamed to call them brethren"? (Heb. 
2: 11). Or when will we join with him in saying: ''Behold my 
mother and my brethren ! Whosoever shall do the will of 
my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and 
sister, and mother. . . . My Father, and your Father"? (Matt. 
12:49, 50; John 20: 17). 

First Week, Second Day : Still Struggling for Mono- 
theism 

Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose 
right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him, 
... I am Jehovah, and there is none else; besides me there 
is no God. I will gird thee, though thou hast not known 
me; that they may know from the rising of the sun, and 

1 " Asia and Europe," pp. 50 and 150. 

2 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-3] 

from the west that there is none besides me: I am Jeho- 
vah, and there is none else. — Isa. 45 : i, 5, 6. 

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were 
called in one hope of your calling . . . one God and Father 
of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all. — Eph. 
4:4,6. 

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: 
for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich unto all 
that call upon him. — Rom. 10: 12. 

We shall never attain the democracy of God until we have 
a common, vital, monotheistic faith at the spiritual basis of 
our lives. There was a time when tribal gods were commonly 
worshiped. This was true amongst all neighboring peoples 
in Isaiah's time. Even Yahweh, himself, had been honored 
as the exclusively national God of Israel. With magnificent 
insight, however, the prophets declared Yahweh to be the 
controller of the whole world. Isaiah believed that even the 
foreigner, Cyrus, could be considered an anointed servant of 
Jehovah. Amos must have astounded the people of his day 
by declaring that God does not love the Israelites more than 
the Negroes (Amos 9:7). And a beautiful Syriac render- 
ing of Isaiah 9:7 says that ''Great is his kingdom and of 
his dominion is there no frontier." Hebrew prophecy was 
the interpretation of history in terms of God's purpose, and 
increasingly was it perceived that this purpose was utilizing 
other nations along with Israel. 

Signs are not wanting, however, that even in modern times 
many have been worshiping tribal gods. The aspirations and 
petitions of many a prayer during the War revealed an un- 
conscious survival of belief in one's deity as limited to one's 
area. Are we willing to believe that some non-Christian 
monarch or people may be chosen agents in the hand of our 
God? Do we really acknowledge to ourselves that the Alaskan 
and the Burman, the Korean and the African are just as dear 
to God as we? Let us with warmth of conviction exclaim: 
"God's in the Occident — God's in the Orient.'* 

First Week, Third Day: The Essential Condition 
for the Larger Unity 

There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be 
neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; 
for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus. — Gal. 3 : 28. 

3 



[1-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision 
and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, free- 
man; but Christ is all, and in all. — Col. 3:11. 

In yesterday's reading we saw the fundamental basis for 
the larger self ; in today's, Paul shows us the essential condi- 
tion for its attainment. Distinctions of race, of social posi- 
tion, even of sex, become relatively unimportant in Christ — 
that is, in our becoming Christian. When God's Spirit dwells 
in us, a life is possible that is superior to these differences. 
They are not non-existent, but they seem superficial compared 
with that sense of deeper unity which comes from realities 
disclosed in Christ. 

That any two human beings are coequally children of their 
Father is a vastly more significant truth than that one is a 
Jew and the other a Greek. Once catch a vision of man's 
common relationship to the one source, God, and we see that 
the realm in which we share is vastly larger than the realm 
in which we differ. In all the mystery of our origin, in all 
the vastness of our resources, in all the hope for life ahead, 
we are conjoined with every other human being. What in 
comparison is the differing social status of master or slave? 
If woman must be born again in the form of man in order to 
be saved, as is held in popular Hinduism, if she is a dis- 
tinctly lower order of being as in Africa, then of course 
the distinction of male and female is enormously and far- 
reachingly significant. But if through Christ we see the 
reality of the spiritual oneness of man and woman, and con- 
template their common privilege of living the eternal life in 
time under the care and by the power of God, this common 
dignity overshadows and ennobles every other thing. 

Sometimes a catastrophe brings about this consciousness 
of simple humanity. When Robinson Crusoe first saw the 
man Friday, the fact that they were fellow-humans was more 
dominating than color or creed. When the earth's crust 
shakes and terror drives people from their homes, the mem- 
bers of the heterogeneous company huddled in a place of 
refuge are more conscious of their common human frailty 
before this mighty force than they are of old distinctions that 
loomed so large in days of safety when they forgot their God. 

But what the earthquake can do for a night, Christ can 
make an abiding attitude. Fellowship with him gives a spiritual 
perspective that is vital for all time. The world must catch 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-4] 

from him the overwhelmingly greater significance of what 
unites rather than of what separates mankind. Those indi- 
viduals and those nations who really try to follow him will 
Rnd amongst themselves an identity of interest and of aim 
that will command attention, to the exclusion or correction 
of the things which now divide. 

Here, then, is a practical test for every Christian. Amid 
race prejudice and national rivalry, does the deeper unity 
stand out for us? Do we feel closer to a Chinese or an 
African who is trying to be a Christian than we do to a 
fellow-countryman who is making no such effort? Can we 
ever have a league of nations without a deep sense of our 
underlying unity? 

Paul does not underestimate the magnitude of this change 
in point of view. To him it is a moral change that can be 
likened only to a new life, the putting on of a new man. 
Paul never would have tolerated two classes, Christian and 
world Christian. Becoming a Christian meant to him some- 
thing deep and thoroughgoing. In these two epistles he 
testifies to a wonderful change in attitude. I ask m.yself two 
questions : Has there ever been such a change in my mental 
attitude? If so, would I consider it, as Paul did, so great an 
evidence of God's working in me that I would write it to 
my friends as ''good news"? 

First Week, Fourth Day : The Interrelation of Peo- 
ples 

But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things 
into him, who is the head, even Christ; from whom all 
the body fitly framed and knit together through that 
which every joint supplieth, according to the working in 
due measure of each several part, maketh the increase 
of the body unto the building up of itself in love. — Eph. 
4:15, 16. 

That there should be no schism in the body; but that the 
members should have the same care one for another. And 
whether one member suffereth, all the members suffer 
with it; or one member is honored, all the members re- 
joice with it. — I Cor. 12 : 25, 26. 

For none of us liveth to himself, and none dieth to 
himself. — Rom. 14: 7. 

That apart from us they should not be made perfect.— 
Heb. 11:40, 



[1-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Most of these verses were spoken primarily with reference 
to the Church as an organization. Today they seem equally 
applicable to the whole world. For not only the physical but 
the mental seismographs in every land are sensitive to the 
smallest shock at any place. A pistol shot in a small Bohemian 
town could set four-fifths of the world at war. True, also, 
are these verses if applied even to things no more profound 
than the cross-section of the day of a modern man. "When 
he rises, a sponge is placed in his hand by a Pacific Islander, 
a cake of soap by a Frenchman, a rough towel by a Turk. 
His merino underwear he takes from the hand of a Spaniard, 
his linen from a Belfast manufacturer, his outer garments 
from a Birmingham weaver, his scarf from a French silk 
grower, his shoes from a Brazilian grazier. At breakfast his 
cup of coffee is poured by natives of Java and Arabia; his rolls 
are passed by a Kansas farmer, his beefsteak by a Texan 
ranchman, his orange by a Florida Negro."" And so on 
through the day — a million men and women and children 
have been working for him ; and in return he should add his 
mite to the common stock upon which others draw. 

It is not enough, however, merely to recognize these inter- 
relations. We must also see what lies back of these contribu- 
tions to our lives. Our coal, our clothes, our ornaments — 
these things are a part of our system, are a part of us. Many 
of these things are the fruit of slum conditions and represent, 
not something apart, but the reverse of what seems like the 
splendid fabric of our lives. In the graphic figure of H. G. 
Wells, ''The wide rich tapestry of your lives comes through 
on the other side, stitch for stitch, in stunted bodies, in chil- 
dren's deaths." And what is true in the social and industrial 
world holds true in the international. In fact, Norman An- 
gell's "The Great Illusion" holds as its thesis that no people 
can possibly benefit itself by conquering, impoverishing, or 
even forcibly annexing another people. The other nation 
also is part of the larger self, and we suffer with the other 
member. 

But even if there were no unsocial conditions of production 
of which to think, would we be relieved of responsibility? 
Can we take from Rome, from Greece, from Arabia, from 
Eg3'pt, the very words and numbers that we hourly use and 



2 George Harr-**;, " I/oral Evol>'tion," p. 36. 

6 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-5] 

feel no sense of obligation in return? Shall we accept from 
Japan and China the ripe fruitage of their rare arts and feel 
that the whole debt has been discharged when a mere money 
recompense has been made? vSomething more than the re- 
moval of downright selfishness is needed on the part of the 
individual and the group if class and racial troubles are to 
cease. There could still remain that preoccupation with one's 
more narrow range of interests that obliterates all sense of 
solidarit3^ What we need is a consciousness alive to the 
significance of a membership one with the other. We should 
not need another war to burn into us the awful results of 
attempting to live unto ourselves alone. 

Let us, on the other hand, not fail to draw inspiration for 
resourceful constructive work from a vivid realization of our 
interrelationships. For every social reformer, every religious 
worker, may know that each victory that he wins will benefit 
not merely those whose interests he immediately seeks to 
serve, but also his awakening fellow-members the world 
around. So real and intricate are our interrelations that the 
removal of unchristian principles from the social institutions 
of any land makes the progress of every other land just so 
much more possible. If we long that God's will should be 
done anywhere, it is wise and reasonable to keep in mind the 
whole, to work and pray that *'thy will be done on earth/' 

First Week, Fifth Day: God's Kindergarten for 
Eternity 

For I will not dare to speak of any things save those 
which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of 
the Gentiles, by word and deed, in the power of signs and 
wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit; so that from 
Jerusalem, and round about even unto Illyricum, I have 
fully preached the gospel of Christ. . . . 

Wherefore also I was hindered these many times from 
coming to you: but now, having no more any place in 
these regions, and having these many years a longing 
to come unto you, whensoever I go unto Spain. — Rom. 
15: 18, 19, 22-24a. 

And they went through the region of Phrygia and 
Galatia, having been forbidden of the Holy Spirit to 
speak the word in Asia; and when they were come over 
against Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia; and the 
Spirit of Jesus suffered them not; and passing by Mysia, 

7 

I 



[1-5] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to 
Paul in the night: There was a man of Macedonia stand- 
ing, beseeching him, and saying. Come over into Macedo- 
nia, and help us. And when he had seen the vision, 
straightway we sought to go forth into Macedonia, con- 
cluding that God had called us to preach the gospel 
unto them. — Acts i6:6-io. 

Every night as we look up at Orion or the Pleiades God 
is encouraging us to live more magnificent, inclusive lives. 
Put yourself out in the universe and look back upon the tiny, 
half-cooled orb we call the earth. Here is where God has set 
us for a few days to train us for eternity. A few continents, 
a few peoples, myriads of stars to draw us on — such is our 
kindergarten. 

Notice how Paul had learned this lesson. The book of 
Acts deals with great sweeps of geography. Along the great 
Roman roads, through the great centers of government, Paul 
not only thought but went. Troas was Paul's door to Europe 
— Rome and Spain lay on ahead. It was because Paul could 
think in the world terms of his time that the first great ex- 
pansion of the Kingdom was made possible. Into the range 
of his thinking and sympathy had come his whole world. 
Who does not feel that Paul had already graduated into an 
ampler school? 

Francis Xavier was another who had learned to grasp a 
world. He was sent forth by Loyola with the charge, "Go set 
the world on fire," and in ten crowded years he gave his mes- 
sage in India, Malacca, Ceylon, Cochin, Japan. When, finally, 
his life burnt out at the gate of China, he was planning to 
preach Christ through that empire, and to evangelize Europe 
by way of Siberia. ''Eternity only, Francis, is sufficient for 
such a heart as yours," wrote his master, Loyola, ''the king- 
dom of glory alone is worthy of it." 

The question for us is whether we, with the immensely 
increased resources at our command, have left the primary 
grade with reference to this little ball on which we live. Have 
we Paul's grasp of facts? Can we, like him, think in conti- 
nents? Many of us have but begun to learn this first lesson 
for world citizenship — mere expansiveness of sympathy. 
America has a greater challenge than any other nation to 
leave the provincial and to develop the international mind. 
If the president of the National City Bank can declare that 

8 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [1-6] 

the banker of the future must be an international thinker, 
how much more must the Church rear up Christians who can 
think in world terms. In the New York subway an adver- 
tisement of chewing gum has actually been pictured against 
a background of the globe ; and surely the Christian, because 
of his being such, should be able to think as far around the 
world as South Dakota wheat is carried. A world-encircling 
purpose and vision is needed right through our church mem- 
bership. Can you think beyond the bounds of your own 
community, or state, or nation? Are you accustoming your- 
self to think in world terms? 

One must make the start and live with it daily, for one 
does not pass from parochial to world thought over night. 
John Wesley had it when he spoke of the world as his parish. 
William Lloyd had it w^hen he said, ''My country is the world ; 
my countrj^men the inhabitants of it." The shoemaker, William 
Carey, had overcome provincialism when, in reading the life 
of David Brainerd, he could not but ask, "If God can do 
such things for the Indians of America, why not for the 
pagans of India?" Alexander Mackay became what he was 
to Uganda because a father knew how to trace the journeys 
of Livingstone on a map before the boy and because a 
mother's heart had thrilled to tales of missionary heroism. 
Today a band of twenty-five thousand American, British, and 
continental missionaries are working at a world problem. 
Modern missions have caught the vision of the world and 
are at work for mankind. Have you caught it? Are you 
growing more able day by day to pray "Thy kingdom come" 
with new content not only in the quality but in the expansive- 
ness of that conception? The modern mind and heart and 
conscience must not have frontiers. 

First Week, Sixth Day : Self-Identification with the 
Larger Group 

And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and said, O, this 
people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods 
of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin — ; and 
if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou 
hast written. — Exodus 32:31, 32. 

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bear- 
ing witness with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great 
sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish 

9 



[1-6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's 
sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israel- 
ites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the 
covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of 
God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of 
whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, 
God blessed for ever. Amen. — Rom. 9: 1-5. 

In these burning words Moses and Paul reveal the com- 
pleteness of their identification with the larger group about 
them. Is anything like such attainment possible for us? Did 
that young lieutenant have it when a shell fell, about to 
explode, amongst the little group for which he was responsi- 
ble, and he impulsively threw himself upon it? 

Some attain this identification through patriotism. ''What 
do I want with money if my country fails? If Russia loses, 
I lose ; if Russia wins, I win.'* So spoke General Tatisheff, 
an out-and-out Christian patriot, in answer to his friends who 
thought him foolish to sell all his property that the proceeds 
might be used by the Government. 

Some approach it through gratitude, as did a patient in 
South China. Having recovered from a severe sickness in 
the mission hospital, he showed how far his old exclusiveness 
had been changed by presenting to his ward a handsome tablet, 
bearing characters which signified, "China with outsiders one 
large family." 

Through devoted response to Africa's deepest need, Francois 
Coillard came still closer to self-identification with the larger 
group when, in 1898, on his third journey to that land, he 
said, ''I am departing for the third time to Africa — poor 
Africa ! Ah, if one could only give oneself to her until the 
last hour of one's life!" 

On the other hand, how easy it is to miss the attainment 
of the larger self, even where failure is least expected. The 
missionary, having responded to a world call, may find him- 
self so engrossed with the detailed routine of an Indian dis- 
trict that all interest in the progress of the Kingdom in other 
lands is crowded out. He may find himself with less knowl- 
edge of world-wide missions than when he was at home. 
A president of a foreign missionary society can actually be 
so enthusiastic over the foreign aspects of the work that she 
is vexed when the prayer-book for home missions is bound 
up v/ith that for foreign missions ; or chafes when the Negro, 

10 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-7] 

or the Mormon, or the immigrant question comes up for dis- 
cussion. It is possible to realize the far-off, and yet quite 
ignore the near-by self. Whenever we identify "Christen- 
dom" with the Western nations only, or confine ''heathendom" 
to the Orient we have failed. 

Perhaps nowhere more than in prayer do we see the meager- 
ness of the self we have attained. ''Bless me and my wife, 
my son John and his wife, us four and no more," is the classic 
embodiment of the microscopic self. On the other hand, we 
find a beautiful example of an expanding self in the simple 
Panjabi Christian, Gulu. Once a desperate character amongst 
the outcastes, he is now known as one of God's great inter- 
cessors. One day Gulu came to his American friend and 
said : "Sahib, teach me some geography." "Why, Gulu, what 
do you want with geography at your age?" "Sahib, I wish 
to study geography so that I may know more about which 
to pray." Shall not v/e examine our prayer life — that for 
which we care enough to intercede — as one index of our 
growth ? 

First Week, Seventh Day: A Prayer for Human 

Solidarity 

« 

As thou didst send me into the world, even so sent I 
them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify my- 
self, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. 
Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that 
believe on me through their word; that they may all be 
one; even as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that 
they also may be in us: that the world may believe that 
thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given 
me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even 
as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may 
be perfected into one; that the world may know that 
thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst 
me. — John 17:18-23. 

We often read these words with no larger application in 
mind than the abolition of lamented denominational differ- 
ences. The union of such Christian sects as have come 
within our range is as far as our longing goes with this 
prayer of Christ's. Many of us do not include in conscious 
thought in connection with these verses such great com- 

II 



[I-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

munions as the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, and the 
Syrian Church in India. 

But can any interpretation of these words be complete 
that confines its thought to European man, or Anglo-Saxon 
man, or even to white man ? When between the Western and 
the Eastern, barriers fall down, and each sees that he cannot 
be the man he ought to be without the other ; when "for their 
sakes" we sanctify ourselves, and include in the word, ^"their," 
other peoples as well as other individuals ; when reciprocity, 
mutuality, and true oneness mark interracial relationships, will 
not this go far toward answering Christ's prayer for evidence, 
in order "that the world may believe that thou didst send me"? 

In no place do we have the social character of personality 
more vividly brought out than here. Our social environment 
is one that includes not only our closer circle but the whole 
world of peoples and God himself. Anything that makes for 
isolation, makes for poverty of personality. 

How is this potential solidarity of all peoples and of man- 
kind w4th God to be m^ade actual? When ''the love wherewith 
thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them." It is love as 
inspired by Christ that binds together. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 
I 

If a child is asked to tell us where his ''self" is, he will 
probably point to his body. In fact, in answer to the ques- 
tion as to what constitutes the self many of us might naively 
reply that it is that of which a photograph can be taken. We 
say, "That is I," pointing toward the picture or to our reflec- 
tion in the mirror. But no man can be wholly found between 
his hat and his boots. And yet some of us keep on thinking 
of the self as in some way enclosed within one's skin. If 
we have not stopped to reflect, this conception of an epider- 
mal self may never be displaced. 

Every new interest, hozvever, is an addition to one's self. 
Each nezv activity, each new enterprise that calls forth our 
cooperation constitutes an expansion of the self. If Red Cross 
work really moves me, it actually becomes a factor in my 
self. If my impulses find satisfaction in helping Baillie save 
the Yangtze valley by reforesting Pearl Mountain, then this 
interest, by very virtue of this fact, becomes a part of my ego. 

12 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-c] 

If I have accustomed myself to act in such ways that the 
recital of Belgian or Armenian misery makes me restless 
until I go forth in some sort of aid, then this interest in relief 
is a part of myself. On the other hand, if what really moves 
me is the turning of my tens of dollars into hundreds and 
my hundreds into thousands, then that interest is the measure 
of myself. Just because my powers find satisfaction in these 
ends or purposes they comprise a part of the "me." Psycho- 
logically then, the self is as wide and large or as small and 
narrow as one's interests. 

Now although in reality the self is thus expanded, there is 
a tendency in all of us to identify the self with a part only 
of its whole range. Of necessity most of our activities are 
narrowed down to a pretty small range. There is the daily 
round of dressing, breakfasting, and securing the means for 
shelter and the sustenance of life. Just because we generally 
are acting for this more narrow and limited range of self, 
we tend to identify the self with these habitual interests. For 
the law of habit is at work in all of us. Since most of our 
activities center about a narrow range of personal interests, 
we overlook the fact that we are really larger — or may be 
larger — than this realm. One may be interested in buying 
a new automobile for one's family or in welfare work in the 
slums, but in either case it is the self going out to a particular 
object. One may aspire to securing a half-pint bottle of cream 
each morning for one's oatmeal, or may go out to Higginbot- 
tom's agricultural work for India's farmers. It is the self, 
however, that goes forth in either case. The real question 
is as to the kind of self you have. 

II 

It will help us to answer this question if we catch the real 
significance of such words as ''selfish'' and ''unselfish/' We 
use them to describe the behavior of men. But strictly speak- 
ing, if what we have just said is true, there is no such thing 
as absolute selflessness. It is only because people have formed 
the habit of going forth to a rather narrow range of interests 
that this more narrow range prevents their full conception 
of what constitutes the self, so that any interest outside this 
range is said to be wn-selfish. To the hard familiar round 
to which habitual response is made, the word ''selfish" is 
applied. Similarly from this point of view it is possible to 

13 



[I-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

say that there is really no such thing as absolute self-denial. 
The conception underlying its use implies a limitation of the 
self to the more personal immediate interests. If we were 
not in the habit of having a petty expression of ourselves, 
the word never would have been used. 

What then is the real significance lying back of such words 
as ''unselfish" and "self-denial"? Of course they have their 
value in common speech, but one should realize the confusion 
into which they may lead one's thinking. "Unselfishness" does 
not mean lack of self, for all that we do must be in response 
to some satisfaction our self gets in the act, but it refers to 
the kind of self that gets the satisfaction; it signifies a truer 
sense of values. "Selfish" is used to. describe a person who 
centers on only a part of his whole possible self and who mani- 
festly works for this smaller so-called self. What makes 
selfishness selfish is not that certain activities or interests 
secure the welfare of the self, but that the self that is served 
is a small and narrow self in comparison with what it might 
be. 

What has just been said enables us to realize that there 
is a perfectly natural psychological reason why we are rather 
vexed to have the cause of child labor, or the mountain 
whites, or the Mormons, or a school in Africa brought before 
us. Such things make demands not only upon our pocket- 
books, but primarily upon our capacity for expanding our 
range of interests. They may easily require a readjustment 
of what constitutes our self. These causes may involve the 
renouncing of the old self and making a new adjustment in 
the light of the new possibilities of activity. Now the break- 
ing of any habit is more or less unpleasant. We tend, there- 
fore, to resist any ideal expansion of the self beyond the 
customary range. If it requires rather unpleasant concentra- 
tion and effort to acquire a new stroke in swimming or to 
learn tennis at fifty, it is just as natural that there should 
be something taxing about altering the habitual trend of our 
interests. If you are not used to such readjustments, if you 
have not kept yourself flexible through habitual response 
to public and national and international spirit, such rearrange- 
ments are likely to be very trying. 

The process of readjustment is the only kind of self- 
renunciation that is moral. Renunciation is not a dying to 
the real self but only to the sin of narrowness. It is really 

14 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-c] 

an enlargement of the self — a realignment, with the new data 
taken into consideration. But the ideal world citizen is alive 
to the demand for a constant readjustment of the self. In 
each case of choice the decision ought to be for the highest 
largest purpose that can be visioned. This may mean pro- 
ceeding with activities that will secure you a college educa- 
tion, or will make the comfort of your wife and family secure. 
Or it may mean launching out for a bank position in South 
America or a big task under some mission board in China. 
Whether the decision is selfish or unselfish depends on w^hether 
you have enlarged the circle of your real self to include those 
other wider demands upon your consideration, and whether 
you act for the common good of this new circle. The obliga- 
tion is not for any particular act, whether geographically near 
or far, but for an expanding self which will in each new 
enlargement act on the highest purpose that can express the 
greater self. 

From our daily study this week we want to catch the duty 
and the joy of expansion. For we must be like God in this 
as well as in other respects. He did not merely love, but 
he loved ''the world'* — the largest possible circle as far as 
we are concerned. *'Ye are the salt of the earth," Jesus said 
— not merely of Palestine. "Ye are the light of the world" — 
not merely of your small circle. We rejoice to think that 
infinite reaches are ahead of us ; that God has set no limit 
to the development of this capacity of going out to larger 
and larger ranges of interests and of entering into wider 
and wider relations with human beings. Part of the process 
of becoming perfect as he is perfect is to attain range of 
love as well as quality of love. If any man would save his 
life, that is, if any one is going to hold on to his small 
self and try to wall in what he is at any point in his de- 
velopment, then Christ says he will lose the only thing that 
can be called life. But if any man will lose his self — -if any 
man for Christ's sake will break through the crust that 
habit is ever forming about a given self, he will find a newer, 
richer, larger self — he v/ill save his life. 

The attainment of the larger self should therefore be a 
matter of immense importance to everyone. It is a part of 
the saved life. One may not sit lightly back and say that 
he has no interest in the world outreach of his church, any 
more than he may say lightly that he is not interested in 

15 



[I-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

becoming holy, or righteous, or loving. Even to be pre- 
occupied with one's own affairs to such an extent that one 
is oblivious to the needs of others, or to be too indolent to 
conceive or to strive for a larger self, is a serious matter — 
it is to miss the goal ! A good many people in our churches 
who refuse to think of the needs of foreign lands, and who 
have never learned to go out in prayer and gift and service 
for them, can honestly say that they are not consciously 
acting on what the world calls self-seeking motives. But 
nevertheless their self is smaller and less rich than it might 
be. Interests are the measure of the self, and the question 
at stake in this first standard for world service is the kind 
of self you are building up. , 

III 

Let us enter into the appreciation of the far-reaching com- 
plexity of the self from another angle. We are all impressed 
with the extent to which the nineteenth century has be- 
queathed to the twentieth a problem of interrelationships 
hitherto unknown in the history of the world. The War 
emphatically reveals the interlacing of the races : Chinese 
Christians from America are sent to France to minister to 
Chinese laborers there ; purdah women in India knit for 
their soldiers in Europe; every time we put a piece of white 
bread to our lips we are reminded that the fate of the world 
for a century ahead lies in no small measure in just such 
acts. We tried, at first, to go our way, with the idea that 
the War did not concern us. But such a course was im- 
possible. 

Even before the War thoughtful minds were noting the 
increasing interdependence of nations. They saw the stream 
of student life flowing from every land toward the great 
centers of Western learning. Hookworm was found to pre- 
vail all round the world ; and its eradication must include 
the planet. Both the tares and the wheat of one field pass 
over into the next, for thistles as well as maple seeds have 
wings. So, too, in child philanthropy the mill conditions of 
Japan and China must be considered, as well as those of 
America and England. The thinking and the acting of a 
world are reported to our doors each morning for a mere 
pittance. Great human causes like the woman's movement 
and the spirit of democracy are surging through the world, 

i6 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-c] 

calling for a new breadth of vision and depth of wisdom. 
There are no longer any foreign nations — there are those 
with different languages and customs, but they are all right 
at our door. No longer do we speak of sundering seas ; the 
oceans have become a bond. Inextricably linked up are we 
with a world society of immeasurable intricacy, complexity, 
and pervasiveness. 

IV 

But what has this to do with me? How is the self which 
I identify with my own individuality concerned in this move- 
ment? Much every way. Let us therefore think further 
about this self and see what it really signifies. 

On the one hand there is an extreme individualistic con- 
ception of society. Suppose we have a stone wall before us. 
Can we, by way of analogy, use the stones of different shapes 
and sizes to represent the varied individuals about us? And 
in like manner may we take the wall to represent society? 
Without doubt we have a certain consciousness of separate- 
ness and of freedom of will and with this comes the feeling 
of personal responsibility. From this point of view we do 
seem almost as separate one from the other as those stones 
in the wall. In this mood we may grant that an individual 
may submerge and lose himself in a crowd, yet we are apt 
to think of this same individual as emerging from the crowd 
to live a life of reason by himself. With the stone-wall 
theory of society, salvation is as simple as the rescue of indi- 
viduals, and evangelism needs no other method than an appeal 
for a change of will. Furthermore, he who goes forth to 
world service may imagine that he can transfer his "self" with 
more or less completeness from one social group in America 
to a place in some distant society, just as a stone might be 
taken from this wall and be put more or less unchanged into 
some structure in a foreign land. 

V 

But my "self" is not done up in a little bundle which ends 
with my finger-tips and which can be removed from place 
to place with more or less completeness, as a brick might be 
transferred. We are seeing more clearly than ever the social 
character of Christianity. Many a one who goes as a mis- 

17 



[I-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

sionary to a foreign land has had this impressed upon him. 
Not infrequently such ambassadors are rudely awakened to 
the fact that the Christianity they had come to give was not 
wholly in themselves ; that what had sustained them and 
made them what they were at home was the uplifting influ- 
ence of friends, associations, the whole church connection, 
and the general Christian environment in which they were 
submerged; that apart from this larger §elf they had less 
of the real thing in them than they had supposed. As a 
matter of fact, every person who goes abroad commits 
partial suicide in the limited sense that he has to some extent 
broken up the old self and left part of it behind. 

Social workers especially emphasize this aspect of the com- 
plexity of the self. They see so plainly the effects of the 
pressure of the great social forces on the individual that 
some are wrongly led into a kind of social fatalism. The 
individual seems to them to be merely the resultant of the 
ever-present social forces, amidst which he lives. 

Salvation is turned over to this social pressure and the 
individual is relieved of responsibility for exercising his will. 
From this standpoint the individual is not a stone in a wall 
but a point in a mesh — a network — binding him inextricably 
with all the human and material environment about him, that 
is, a center of relationships. We might call this the "net- 
work," as over against the "stone-wall" view of society. 

VI 

Now each of these points of view is partially right and 
partially wrong — right in that it truly represents life from 
one particular point of view ; but wrong when it sets up its 
aspect of life as a picture of the whole. For human life, 
like an ellipse, must be regarded from two foci. From one 
pole of the ellipse human life does seem to have its separate 
individual aspect. But this must be recognized as not the 
whole truth, but an abstraction from the whole. There is 
no such thing as an absolutely separate individual in the 
strict sense. There is only an individual aspect of the fact 
of life. The other pole of the ellipse gives us the social 
point of view, and show^s us how interrelated each part of 
society is with other parts. The world servant will be alive 
to the duties and responsibilities of both these poles. But 
it is the second aspect upon which we are centering thought 

i8 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-c] 

in this chapter — the fact of the larger social self, zvhich exists 
in its ramifying interrelations whether zve are conscious of 
it or not. We are not going to think of ourselves, then, as 
so many separate matches in a match-box. Our consciousness 
will not be of a self as a separate, detached, more or less 
fixed entity, which may or may not take on college, com- 
munity, or world interests. One comes to realize that the 
entering or not upon these new interests determines the kind 
of self he is to be. 

VII 

For the individual this conception of the larger self is a 
challenge to become cosmo-Christian, to pass from the class 
of spiritual defectives. Much as the habit of world thought 
has been developed since 1914, we must still more acquire 
a consciousness of humanity. The activities of some people 
take place in such a narrow circle that they are not able, 
except in their highest moments, to get beyond its narrow 
confines. There is a tendency for such to respond as did 
that African, who, called to help a man whose boat was 
sinking and who could not swim, stood calmly on the river 
bank, and said : "He is not of my village." 

On the social side it is a call to search out what men have 
in common and to work unfailingly against whatever un- 
necessarily divides them. It will enlist him in breaking 
down the barriers of social stratification which threaten the 
unity of the human kind. He will not rest in mere negatives 
such as showing the lamentable effects of war, or mere 
avoidance of those things which lead to international strife, 
but there will be a positive emphasis on what draws people 
together in objective endeavor irrespective of national boun- 
daries. He will see that he cannot be Christian in the full 
sense until this larger self is Christianized — until the whole 
social order is Christianized. He will see that he has cor- 
porate as well as merely individual responsibilities. On the 
psychological side, the conception of the larger self will be 
a summons to each one to acquire a disposition of the mind 
which will be hospitable in the face of each new demand 
on one's interests. It is a call to the international heart and 
mind. As the complexity of our relationships becomes more 
involved, each generation increasingly needs individuals who 
have visioned with insight and tenacity that we are members 

19 



[I-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

one of another, and recognize the world sweep of the obliga- 
tions of discipleship. 

For the Church it is a challenge to provide a gospel suited, 
not simply to the individual, but to that larger social life 
which, in these modern times, one may well claim is the most 
obtrusive aspect of life as he actually has to live it. The 
Church must realize that many will be testing it by the solu- 
tions which it can bring to problems of national and inter- 
national relations. If the Church is at all to fulfil the possi- 
bilities of the larger self, she must assert the lordship of 
Christ not only over the individual but also over the cor- 
porate relations of men and women. This lordship must 
be manifested at the back doors of houses, in industry, in 
business, in politics, in international relations. So insistent 
are the problems of the larger social self, that, unless the 
Church unfolds the application of Christianity to these phases 
of our lives and gives to the solution a sanctity and spirit 
of her own, she need not be surprised if the modern man 
turns from her. The larger self must be evangelized and 
saved. 

The foreign missionary will feel that he is enabling his 
home constituency to realize their larger selves by adminis- 
tering their w^ork abroad. Missionary societies are the organ- 
izations through which the broader self-realization is made 
possible. It is indeed an inspiring thing to think of 25,000 
Protestant missionaries, off in their thousands of villages 
or city communities, inculcating principles that lie at the 
basis of all Christian democracy and all permanent inter- 
national good will. 

For peoples of other lands this standard of world citizen- 
ship will, for example, lead them to approach their problems 
of sanitation not simply for their own local good. They will 
be led to see that public hygiene is a problem of international 
duty, that the mastery of bubonic plague in India is of vital 
concern to all the world. They will see how all mankind is 
bound together with them and how they can show their sense 
of brotherhood in practical deeds of genuine and sincere 
cooperation in efforts to make the world safe from inter- 
national disease. It is this spirit that led a Chinese car- 
penter in one of the furthest removed villages from Tientsin 
to bring in a Mexican dollar, saying that he had heard about 
the Armenian suffering and wanted to help. It is what filled 

20 



CONSCIOUSNESS OF LARGER SELF [I-c] 

the inmates of the leper asylum at Miraj, India. Twenty-five 
rupees had been sent out from America to provide a Christ- 
mas dinner for them. After a time one of the smitten group 
came and said, "We have been talking it over and we want 
you to take five rupees of the amount and send to the suffer- 
ing women and children of Belgium." It was the expanded 
self that led an aged Dyak chief to come down the river in 
his dugout, from some days' distance away, with some fresh 
paddi, bananas, and two chickens, which he begged the White 
Man to accept, and to send on to his brother orang-putch, 
or white brother, who lay wounded and sick beyond the 
ocean. Finally, it was the larger self developing in the in- 
terior of Africa that characterized Mandombi. Fifty mem- 
bers of his congregation and more than a hundred other 
converts had been carried off by sleeping sickness. No one 
seemed to understand the disease. Mandombi, knowing that 
he himself was a victim, conceived the idea of offering his 
life to save his people. Taking with him five pounds' worth 
of cloth — his total savings — he left his world, journeyed to 
the coast, and set his face toward England. He knew little 
of modern research and of post mortems, but offered his 
body for experimentation in order that his people might 
not die. When Mandombi left his wife and two children 
and gave himself as a sacrifice for his people, he was forming 
the kind of self that must live on and on forever. It is 
this life which God means us to have. 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What would be the conception of self held by (a) An 
African tribesman? (b) An Indian fakir? (c) A Chinese 
indemnity student in America? 

2. What is the meaning of the self to you? 

3. What are some of the corporate responsibilities of the 
modern man? 

4. In what specific ways has the War made it easier to 
think in world terms? 

5. Where does the chief danger lie in having a limited 
range of interests? 

6. What picture, analogy, or diagram would you use to 
bring out the relationship of the individual to society? 

7. Show wherein the following passages from the Bible 

21 



[I-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

illustrate and enforce the thought of this week: Genesis 
Chapter i, 9*i5; 12:1-3; 28:13, 14. 

8. What is the relation between seeking first the Kingdom 
of God and attaining a consciousness of the larger self? 

9. What for you is the geographical content of the word 
"Christendom"? 

ID. To what extent may you judge the degree to which you 
have attained the larger self by an observation of your range 
of prayer? 

11. What was the justification for the phrase, ^'foreign 
missions"? Is it justifiable now? 

12. Just what do you mean by the statement, "God is the 
Father of all men"? Apply this to legislation with reference 
to Oriental immigration. Illustrate it by other modern legis- 
lation. 

13. How would you show that national and racial indi- 
viduality are consistent with the highest Christian interpre- 
tation of the truth that all are of one blood? 



22 



CHAPTER II 

Respect for the Capacity of 
Other Peoples 

The progressive enlargement of the self of which we were 
thinking - last week brings us into direct relationship with 
other races and other peoples. What shall be our dominant 
attitude toward them? Of one thing we may be sure; we 
can never serve a people effectually until we respect them. 
And on the other hand they can develop only a little unless 
they respect themselves. 

One of the most important marks, therefore, of the world 
Christian will be a fundamental respect for the capacities 
and attainments of other peoples. This will be the first step 
in stimulating that faith and courage which these peoples 
must have if they are to come into their own highest possi- 
bilities. One of the saddest of experiences is to dwell 
amongst a people who passively accept the judgment of 
inferiority from their^ overlords. And one of the most 
glorious privileges granted man is to help build up in such a 
people the spirit of a God-based hope and boundless confi- 
dence that they have a work to do and a contribution to make 
that is unique and without which the world would be the 
poorer. Let us see what the Bible contributes to this element 
of the Christian consciousness. ^ 

DAILY READINGS 

Second Week, First Day: The Divine Light Which 
Lighteth Every Man 

In the beginning was the Word. ... In him was life; 
and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth 
in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not. 
. . . There was the true light, even the light which 

23 



[II-i] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRIST14N 

lighteth every man, coming into the world. He was in 
the world, and the world was made through him, and 
the world knew him not. — John i : i, 4, 5, 9, 10. 

The writer of these verses was mainly interested in prov- 
ing that the divine spirit or reason was incarnate in Christ. 
But there was another problem also. Thinkers of the early 
Church were faced with a difficulty which has increasingly 
confronted our generation, namely, how to account for ele- 
ments of truth and beauty in non-Christian systems. The 
early fathers did not have to account for the strong points 
of Buddhism and Confucianism and Hinduism ; but they 
could not ignore the attainments of their own philosophers. 
Some of the earliest fathers frankly recognized Plato as 
another of the Minor Prophets. But the solution most ac- 
cepted as they pondered over the evidence of truth outside 
Christianity was that the light that shines clearly in Christ 
sends gleams into every part of the world. The principle 
they wrought out in seeking to account for an Amos or a 
Plato, can be applied by us to a Zoroaster, a Mencius, or a 
Ramanuja. This principle was that the Word is eternally 
active and leaves no human being outside his light. 

In these days when serious study of the non-Christian reli- 
gions is revealing innumerable fragments of truth scattered 
up and down amongst them, attention is being redirected to 
this conception of a divine manifestation of God which is 
eternally forth-streaming. How else can we account for 
the long continued wrestling of the non-Christian mind 
with problems of the spirit; how else can we explain the 
reality and rich variety of the experience of their religious 
leaders; how better can we understand elements of power 
and value in their literature and practice? The great ecumeni- 
cal missionary conference, that met at Edinburgh in 1910, 
reflected in a remarkable way the position of today's reading. 
One of its great Commissions says: 'The religion of Christ, 
interpreted in the light of the Incarnation, finds everywhere 
traces of that Light which lighteth every man, that seminal 
Word giving fragments of truth even to those not privileged 
to know God in Christ. The missionary, so instructed, asks 
of any nation. What is the truth in it by which it has lived 
through these many centuries?" 

Is our little response to a big light really so much more 
worthy than a great response to a little light? Am I, in 

24 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-2] 

reality, only a nominal Christian? Or am I rejoicing in 
and am I illuminated by the light that lighteth every man? 

Second Week, Second Day: Recognizing the Func- 
tion of Non-Christian Peoples 

And the land of Judah shall become a terror unto 
Egypt; every one to whom mention is made thereof shall 
be afraid, because of the purpose of Jehovah of hosts, 
which he purposeth against it. 

In that day there shall be five cities in the land of 
Egypt that speak the language of Canaan, and swear to 
Jehovah of hosts; one shall be called The city of destruc- 
tion. 

In that day shall there be an altar to Jehovah in the 
midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border 
thereof to Jehovah. And it shall be for a sign and for 
a witness unto Jehovah of hosts in the land of Egypt; 
for they shall cry unto Jehovah because of oppressors, 
and he will send them a saviour, and a defender, and he 
will deliver them. And Jehovah shall be known to Egypt, 
and the Egyptians shall know Jehovah in that day; yea, 
they shall v/orship with sacrifice and oblation, and shall 
vow a vow unto Jehovah, and shall perform it. And 
Jehovah will smite Egypt, smiting and healing; and 
they shall return unto Jehovah, and he will be entreated 
of them, and will heal them. 

In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to 
Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the 
Egyptian into Assyria; and the Egyptians shall worship 
with the Assyrians. 

In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and 
with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for 
that Jehovah of hosts hath blessed them, saying, Blessed 
be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, 
and Israel mine inheritance. — Isa. 19: 17-25. 

The remarkable thing in these verses is the way in which 
Egypt and Assyria are given an honored place along with 
Israel. The prophet is leading in a tremendous change of 
attitude to other lands. For the people of Israel had been 
used to think of themselves as God's unique possession from 
among all peoples, as a kingdom of priests, a holy nation unto 
Jehovah. They had heard God's voice saying: "I will make 
of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy 
name great; and be thou a blessing: and I will bless them 

25 

/ 



[11-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse: and 
in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 
12:2, 3). But in the last verse of today's reading we find 
that three typical names which had heretofore been applied 
only to Israel are recognized as applicable to other nations 
also. It at last dawns on the prophetic consciousness that 
Jehovah can speak of Egypt as *'my people," and Assyria as 
''the work of my hands." That Israel should be spoken of 
as third, with Egypt and Assyria as first and second in the 
trio which is to be "a blessing in the midst of the earth," is 
the wonder in this most missionary of Isaiah's prophecies. 

Now we need to learn Isaiah's lesson, for our times are 
not unlike his. Israel was finding it necessary to look beyond 
its own nation and adjust itself to a larger world — the world 
of Western Asia. Isaiah helped his people to expand from 
international isolation or toleration to international appre- 
ciation. America, in its turn, is passing from a stage of 
national insularity. 

Are we to recognize that other nations have a real part to 
play in God's great plans for the world? Are we willing 
to think of ourselves as associated with any other peoples 
that we may together become a blessing to the earth? As 
we scan each day the ttiorning news, may we be gi^ en insight 
to see the hand of a sovereign God in the unfolding history 
of the Assyrians of our day! 

Second Week, Third Day: The Test of Forfeited 
Leadership 

But of a truth I say unto you, There were many widows 
in Israel in the days of EUjah, when the heaven was shut 
up three years and six months, when there came a great 
famine over all the land; and unto none of them was 
Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, 
unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many 
lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and 
none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian. 
And they were all filled with wrath in the synagogue, 
as they heard these things; and they rose up, and cast him 
forth out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the 
hill whereon their city was built, that they might throw 
him down headlong. — Luke 4:25-29. 

In these verses we have examples of God*s special blessing 

26 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-3] 

being conferred upon heathen. This suggestion wounded 
Jewish pride and self-conceit, and the impHcation that God 
might turn from them to non-Jews especially angered these 
people of Nazareth. 

But whenever God has passed leadership on to humbler 
peoples, the same surprise felt by the men of Nazareth has 
been experienced. The Christians at Jerusalem could hardly 
be persuaded that the Gospel was really meant for the 
Gentiles as much as for themselves. And when finally leader- 
ship had passed to Rome we can easily imagine a group of 
Christians there making light of missionary efforts amongst 
other peoples. To be sure, there were Caesar^s Gallia and 
Germania, but what could God want to do with these savage 
peoples? Possibly the most intelligent amongst them could 
barely picture to their minds a far-off group of islands where 
men held their crude worship about the Druid stones of 
Britain. And yet to those once-despised peoples of the north, 
leadership did most certainly pass. 

Now the ease with which each group nourishes its own 
pride and vanity and boasts itself superior to all outsiders, 
is a very widespread phenomenon. Each people is likely to 
scorn the things in which other peoples differ from them- 
selves. African tribes think it a huge joke that white people 
do not know their language; to the older Chinese, the Middle 
Kingdom was the yolk of the egg, and other lands were the 
specks here and there in the albumen; while we take it for 
granted that our fair skin and our particular kind of hair 
are absolute marks of group superiority. So common is 
this tendency for a people to regard those traits as superior 
which are peculiar to themselves that a name — ethnocentrism 
— has been given it. 

Today finds us standing in the synagogue with those men 
of Nazareth. Christ has been amongst us. Wonders that he 
longed to do for us and through us for the world remain 
undone because of our lack of faith. Not many mighty 
things have been called forth through great askings. What 
attitude are we going to take as the Master looks about for 
a land that will respond? 

And let us not forget that, as Anglo-Saxons, we are espe- 
cially subject to this ethnocentric pride. Constitutionally we 
have a high sense of racial superiority, and nothing would 
surprise us more than to have God -turn to another race and 

27 



[II-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

give leadership to it. Would not many an Anglo-Saxon 
today thrust Jesus out of his cities and try to cast him 
headlong to destruction, if he should suggest that white 
civilization had refused to hear him and had after nineteen 
hundred years manifested so little comprehension of his 
principles that it would be necessary to turn elsewhere for 
leadership ? May God help us humbly to reflect and examine 
ourselves. '^Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:3). 

Second Week, Fourth Day: Generosity in Appre- 
ciation 

And the centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not 
worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but 
only say the word, and my servant shall be healed. For 
I also am a man under authority, having under myself 
soldiers: and I say to this one. Go, and he goeth; and 
to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant. 
Do this, and he doeth it. And when Jesus heard it, he 
marvelled, and said to them that followed. Verily I say 
unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in 
Israel. And I say unto you, that many shall come from 
the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, 
and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven: but 
the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer 
darkness: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of 
teeth.— Matt. 8:8-12. 

Jesus was an internationalist in the aspect of this week's 
study. Amidst the prejudices of a narrowly centered nation, 
he did not hesitate to point out admirable traits amongst non- 
Jewish peoples. Rising above all petty national jealousies, 
we find him ascribing to a despised Samaritan the possession 
of a most striking ethical attainment. He did not hesitate 
to affirm that many shall come from the east and west and 
shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the 
Kingdom of God. And here in today's reading is the most 
surprising instance of faith that Jesus had found. Should he 
be blind to it because it was found in a Gentile? 

Again we find him ascribing true greatness to the spirit 
of ministry, saying: 'Whosoever would be first among you 
shall be your servant" (Matt. 20:27). Feeling thus, would 
he have refused his meed* of praise if he had found something 

2^ 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-5] 

fine and true such as the following from the Tao-Teh-King- 
of China? ''Heaven is long enduring, and earth continues 
long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure 
and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, 
themselves. This is how they are able to continue and endure. 
Therefore the sage puts his own person last, and yet it is 
found in the foremost place. ... Is it not because he has 
no personal and private ends, that therefore such ends are 
realized? The highest excellence is like that water. The 
excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and 
in its occupying, without striving, the low place which all 
men dislike."^ 

Jesus pronounced a blessing upon the poor in spirit. Would 
he refuse to express appreciation of this spirit when found in 
a non-Christian today? And shall not we, as we turn many 
an arid page of Indian literature, rejoice over this lovely 
prayer by the saint, Tulsi Das? "Lord look Thou upon me — 
nought can I do myself. Whither can I go? To whom but 
Thee can I tell my sorrow? Oft have I turned my face from 
Thee and grasped the things of this world, but Thou art 
the fount of mercy, turn not Thou Thy face from me. . . . 
When I looked away from Thee I had no eyes of faith to 
see Thee where Thou art, but Thou art all seeing. I am 
but an offering cast before Thee. . . . Remember Thy mercy 
and Thy might, then cast Thine eyes upon me and claim me 
as Thy slave, Thy very own . . . Lord, Thy ways ever give 
joy unto my heart. Tulsi is Thine alone, and O, God of 
mercy, do unto him as seemeth good unto Thee."^ 

Second Week, Fifth Day : Incorporating Old Foun- 
dations in the New Social Order 

Because that which is known of God is manifest in 
them; for God manifested it unto them. For the invisible 
things of him since the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being perceived through the things that are made, 
even his everlasting power and divinity. — Rom. i : 19, 20, 

To the people of Lystra, Paul and Barnabas said : 

Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like 



1 " Sacred Books of the East," Vol. 39, p. 52. 
2 S. K. Datta, *' The Desire of India," p. 9i» 

29 



[II-5] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

passions with you, and bring you good tidings, that ye 
should turn from these vain things unto a living God, 
who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all 
that in them is: who in the generations gone by suffered 
all the nations to walk' in their own ways. And yet he 
left not himself without witness, in that he did good and 
gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling 
your hearts with food and gladness. — Acts 14: 15-17. 

So little are we used to planning and acting on the truths 
of yesterday's lesson that we may well ponder for another 
day on this far-reaching truth that God's power and divinity 
have been made manifest to every people in every clime. 
Amongst none has he left himself without witness. When 
taken seriously, this great truth is bound to affect the attitude 
of reconstructors of the world order, whether they go forth 
to other nations as ambassadors of the Church or as Chris- 
tian laymen. Must the new building be made from the 
foundation up with entirely new material? Or shall we go 
forth confident that some of the preparatory work has been 
done and that some bits of material needed will be found 
upon the ground? If we are to exhibit the marks of a world 
Christian, we must sit at Paul's feet in Lystra. For the atti- 
tude with which we approach our world brothers not yet 
Christian will be profoundly affected by our acceptance or 
non-acceptance of Paul's teaching. Much of their building 
is sadly defective — how could it be otherwise without con- 
scious reference to the Master Builder? But in helping them 
to rebuild we may be confident that if with certainty the 
foundation stone of Jesus Christ be laid, there will be bits 
of the old structure that can be fitly used. Shall we, for 
example, throw this brick aside in building the new structure 
— it is the saying of a Chinese sage — ? 

'*To those who are good to me, I am good; and to those 
who are not good to me, I am also good ; — and thus all get 
to be good. To those who are sincere with me, I am sincere ; 
and to those who are not sincere with me, I am also sincere; 
— and thus all get to be sincere."^ 

More than one missionary in China carries with him the 
Analects of Confucius and finds in them many a point of 
contact for a Christian message. It was the conviction of 



3 *' Sacred Books of the East," Vol. 39, p. 9i» 

30 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-6] 

this truth which led a missionary, famous for his knowledge 
of Indian thought and famous also for the number of con- 
verts he had won, to say that it was the bounden duty of 
every missionary to India to read the Bhagavad-Gita through 
once a year at least. 

In this emphasis Christ's spirit and teaching make another 
of their great contributions to the democracy of God. Each 
one of us will be more prepared to enter into helpful, larger 
relationships if we also catch a thoroughgoing conviction 
that others besides ourselves will contribute — that God has 
not left himself without witness amongst any people. 

Second Week, Sixth Day : Rejoicing in the Mutually 
Differing Endowments of Peoples 

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 
And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same 
Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the 
same God, who worketh all things in all. ... If the 
whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If 
the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But 
now hath God set the members each one of them in the 
body, even as it pleased him. And if they were all one 
member, where were the body? But now they are many 
members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the 
hand, I have no need of thee: or again the head to the 
feet, I have no need of you. Nay, much rather, those 
members of the body which seem to be more feeble are 
necessary. — I Cor. 12:4-6, 17-22. 

Here is another great biblical truth, the application of 
which we have too long confined to individuals. We rejoice 
with Paul to acknowledge variety of gifts in persons; let us 
no less enthusiastically recognize variety of endowment and 
faculty amongst peoples. In the great family of God, fullest, 
richest life depends upon the multiplicity and variety of 
function possessed by the various members. Internationally 
we may well say: *'If the whole world were America where 
would be the beautiful gifts of Japan? If the whole were 
Japan where were India? If they were all one member 
where would be our wondrously varied world?" A Christian 
world democracy must welcome the most diversely gifted 
peoples and have the conviction that a use will be found for 

31 



[II-6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

every taste and every instinct and every aptitude that God 
has given them. Every nation's life, as well as every man's 
life, is a thought of God. And it is just this fundamental 
belief in the endowment of other peoples that makes us 
expectant of reciprocity and takes the note of condescension 
from an interchange of service. 

As we get further from the condition of primitive peoples, 
the typical gifts of national groups are increasingly called 
forth. When intercommunication was as yet undeveloped, 
each people did for itself all that was done. For an un- 
developed society is much like that relatively undifferentiated 
organism, the amoeba — every part of which may in succession 
be arms or legs or mouth or stomach. It is when the amoeba 
becomes a many-membered man, and the primitive society 
becomes an intricately correlated modern world that we be- 
come conscious of interdependence. It is easiest in the 
economic realm to show, with Adam Smith in his epoch- 
making 'Wealth of Nations," that there is something which 
each nation can best produce. But the diamonds of Kim- 
berley, the tea of Assam, and the coffee of Brazil may be 
taken as merely symbolic of higher realms of differentiated 
service that each group may render to the world. 

Finally, no more nationally than individually should we 
boast over what we may consider less brilliantly gifted mem- 
bers. There is no place in the mind of a Christian for inter- 
national depreciation. The eye cannot say to the hand, I 
have no need of thee, nor should a boastful American say 
to any land, I have no need of thee. 

In these days more than ever before, those who have been 
regarded as the more feeble parts of a great world family 
have been found to be ''more necessary." Peoples that might 
once have been scorned have been transported by the thou- 
sand to Europe, in order that the health of the whole body 
might be maintained. But the reason why there should be 
no boasting is not because it would be ungracious to laugh 
at those whose humbler gifts are serving us, but because 
it is God that has given one faculty to the one and another 
faculty to the other. Let us beware that we do not impugn 
the wisdom of Him who chose for each person and each 
nation the endowments they possess. 

Here again the Christian spirit makes a great contribution 
to the democracy of God. It recognizes the worth of every 

32 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-7] 

individual — not simply of those apparently most favored. It 
recognizes without disparagement the gift of every individual 
and seeks to develop that gift to the very utmost. May God 
help me today, in my judgment of other peoples, to under- 
stand this truth. Let me despise no group which God has 
made. 

Second Week, Seventh Day: Mutual Supplementa- 
tion by Peoples 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, 
self-control. — Gal. 5 : 22, 23a. 

With a few bold strokes Paul here has sketched nine 
elements of the Christian character. There are aspects of 
character here which after centuries of Christian education 
we do not find it easy, as a people, to embody. On the other 
hand, suppose you read them over, underscoring those quali- 
ties which find marked expression in the Orient. You will 
doubtless underscore qualities which the Occident, if it told 
the truth, would acknowledge that it scorned. Yet come to 
the East and see lands which, through God's grace working 
upon aptitudes already there, may yet make us see the power 
of patience, the grandeur of gentleness, the nobility of meek- 
ness, the dignity of submissiveness, and the glory of humility. 

These are not qualities that the average Anglo-Saxon 
admires. It is really meant to be a term of reproach when 
we speak of "the mild Hindu." Our emphasis is on cour- 
age, truth, justice, duty. These ought we to have done 
and not left the other undone. A full-orbed character in- 
volves more than our fragments of the sphere, and we may 
well work for that time when the Spirit of Jesus Christ shall 
perfect in them elements which will supplement our own. 

Now our blindness to real values in the ideals of Japanese 
and Chinese and Indian and South American civilizations is 
a real hindrance to the spirit of world democracy. Every 
civilization has an angle from which it seems warm and 
bright to its own people. If America does not have enough 
sympathetic love to catch that point of view, much that will 
be done in the way of attempted friendship will be as sound- 
ing brass and a tinkling cymbal. 

2^ 



[II-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

It will help us to form correct attitudes toward other 
peoples if we look for a moment at several considerations 
which will better enable us to appreciate the capacity of the 
peoples of other civilizations than our own. In the first 
place, we need to mark the distinction so finely drawn 
by Professor Franz Boas* between cultural achievement 
and hereditary aptitude for achievement. Starting from the 
acknowledged fact that European civilization is distin- 
guished by greater achievement, the question may be raised 
as to whether this indicates a superior aptitude or capacity 
in European peoples. The ordinary assumption is that the 
race that has attained the highest stage of civilization is 
naturally the most gifted. But a consideration of the ques- 
tion shows that the ways in which different peoples were 
grouped together about the Mediterranean basin, the com- 
parative ease of communication between these peoples, their 
more or less common physical appearance, and the slight 
differences in the modes of manufacture between them were 
favoring conditions facilitating the rapid interchange of new 
advances in civilization that might be made in any one part 
of this Mediterranean area. It is thus plain that historical 
events may have been a very potent factor in leading one 
race to civilization before another. 

A distinction has been made between genius and fame 
which helps us to be fair in the comparison of races. "Genius 
is aptitude for greatness that is born in a man ; fame is the 
recognition by men that greatness has been achieved."^ We 
cannot scientifically compare the racial capacity of Americans 
and Africans by the relative numbers of men or women who 
have attained fame. For genius may not always result in 
fame. To realize this it is sufficient to note, for example, 
one or two obstacles that would almost inevitably prevent 
genius from attaining fame. If the born genius remains 
illiterate, this is a handicap which he can scarcely surmount. 
Would one ever have known Lincoln if his mother had not 
been able to give him a start, small as it was, in reading? 

4 " The Mind of Primitive Man," Chap. I. 

s C. H. Cooley, " Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social 
Science," Vol. IX, pp. 317 seq. 

34 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-c] 

Now there may be Lincolns in Africa, but what percentage 
of African mothers can enable their sons to rise out of the 
illiterate masses? Again, undernourishment may effectually 
keep genius down. When, as in India, malnutrition reaches 
a point where one hundred million go hungry to bed each 
night; and where, as in some parts of China, a mother must 
face the problem of disposing of her baby girl in order to 
conserve food for the rest of the family, we can see how 
possible it is that native ability may have no chance. We 
cannot, therefore, compare nations or peoples merely by the 
relative number of outstanding men. 

A still further aid in securing a proper attitude to other 
peoples is a suitable tune-perspective for judgment. Uni- 
versity professors^ tell us about paleolithic implements which 
may have been made 150,000 years ago. They say that eolithic 
remains may antedate this by 150,000 years. Acknowledging 
these to be rough guesses merely, let us use them to get a 
perspective for judgment as to our relative attainments com- 
pared with other peoples. Crowd those 300,000 years down 
into the time between twelve o'clock last night and twelve 
o'clock this noon. And on that reduced scale it was only 
about twenty minutes to twelve today that our Aryan ances- 
tors were separating, some to go down into India, some to 
the West. Only fifteen minutes ago the Vedas were v/ritten. 
Six minutes ago Buddha, Zoroaster, and Confucius lived, 
while the coming of Christ was only five minutes ago. The 
discovery of the sea routes about Cape Horn and Good Hope 
took place in the last -minute, while all of modern missions 
has filled but fifteen seconds of this reduced cosmic time. 
From this standpoint we do not need to be inordinately proud, 
for five minutes ago India was far ahead of us in civilization ; 
they had high culture when our forefathers were little more- 
than savages. We may be shocked at the promiscuous bath- 
ing customs in the more backward places of Japan and South 
America, and yet, on the scale we have suggested, the taboo 
on nudity in central Europe is as recent as a half minute 
ago. It is well for us to recall "the rock from which we 
were hewn and the pit from which we were digged." Not 
so very long ago St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Patrick, 
Columban, and others found customs and conditions in 



6 See especially Prof. J. H. Robinson, in "A Lecture on History,*' Columbia 
University Press. 

35 



[II-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Europe more savage than a missionary is likely to find in 
mission fields today. The billion illiterates in non-Christian 
lands make a sharp contrast with our numerous schools and 
colleges. And yet it is well for us to remember that a cen- 
tury ago Germany was the only European nation that had 
organized a national system of education ; in England the 
state did not assume responsibility for supplying elementary 
education until 1870; while the spread of free public educa- 
tion and of higher education for women is in the United 
States largely a matter of the last three-fourths of a century. 
With a proper perspective we realize that a few minutes ago 
many mission lands were ahead of us, and that now we are 
only "neck ahead," so to speak. This point of view should 
take from us some of the condescension w^ith which we tend 
to approach another people. 

With minds fixed on the attainments of modern Western 
civilization, it may be flattering to regard priority of attain- 
ment as an indication of superiority. We may enjoy thinking 
of ourselves as further removed from our simian ancestors 
than are the peoples of backward nations. Oblivious to the 
trend of thought with reference to heredity, we may like 
to think that modern civilization has left its mark for good 
on the brain structure of the white child. All these things 
naturally strengthen our racial pride. But it is well for us 
to realize that modern science has not furnished the proof 
of one of those assumptions. 

II 

From such scientific considerations with reference to rela- 
tive racial capacity, we may recall with new freshness those 
conceptions which were fundamental with Jesus. The father- 
hood of God was one of these fundamental realities to Jesus; 
and yet we have rolled this phrase so often from our lips 
that it hardly suggests to us that God's interest in humanity 
must be unmarked by any favoritism. That every man is 
a child of God was fundamental with Jesus, and yet, to most 
of us this has meant a warm assurance of our own sonship, 
rather than the sonship of the Zulu or the Brahman. That 
God is love was central to Jesus ; and yet do we really think 
of the Father's heart hovering in love over each man, woman, 
and child in the Kamerun as it does over the children of our. 
own community? That any one — whether in the slums of a 

36 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-c] 

• 

city or in the New Hebrides — should be loved by God, gives 
to him priceless worth and opens up the certainties of eternal 
life involving endless possibilities. 

Furthermore, Jesus revealed the infinite reaches ahea*d of 
every human being. Our stage of attainment is not fixed, 
and no limit has been set to growth in our Father's heart. 
Let us be certain, therefore, that any race or people who are 
given the chance, who have the knowledge and the will to 
conform to God's law, may advance. For each people who 
will appropriate them, God has great riches in store. Neither 
the Hottentot nor we are wholly bound by past attainment. 
It is a matter of knowledge that the American Negro has 
made vast advances ; and if he lays hold on the principle of 
growth as found in Christ, while we do not, no racial aptitude 
that we seem to possess will keep him from developing on 
beyond us. That "God is able to make all grace abound 
unto you ; that ye, having always all sufBciency in everything, 
may abound unto every good work" (H Cor. 9:8) was not 
said more for the white than the black. Why should we not, 
therefore, enter the new democracy dominated with a bound- 
less trust in man's unlimited capacity to appropriate the in- 
exhaustible good of an infinite God? 

The mind of a world Christian has, then, a fundamental 
respect for other peoples and is enthusiastic over the possi- 
bilities in all mankind. It does not dwell primarily on men's 
defects, but upon their potential promise; not upon what 
distant peoples are not, but upon what they may become. 
It holds that no limits can be set to any race in their growth 
in knowledge, in power, in character, and in a wondrous 
progressive sharing of the life of God. 

When once we begin to think of individuals on our planet 
as God must think of them, then our eyes are made alert 
to see attainments to which before we had been blind. 
Against the background of God's will for the humblest people 
of our day, springs up a thrill of enthusiasm for the spiritual 
possibilities of humanity. And when our hearts and minds 
get saturated with the conviction of the endless capacity of 
the hum.an soul, we are impelled to join with God in that 
patient, educative, hopeful love which helps that soul to attain. 

Ill 

If, then, we have no scientific justification for estimating 

37 



[II-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

white capacity as greater than that of any other race; if 
we are sincere in beHeving that God is not partial in his 
love to his children, then there must have been a yearning of 
the Spirit amidst these other peoples all through the ages. 
We, as Christians in this world outreach, will be from first 
to last awake to the fact that we are beginning our mission- 
ary work far along in the history of God's working with 
these peoples. God has been working there for centuries. 
This conviction will lead us to be alert to see what contribu- 
tions these other peoples will make to the Kingdom of God. 

Any high school essay will recount the racial contributions 
of a certain trio — ethical monotheism from the Jew, beauty 
and philosophy from the Greek, law and organization from 
the Roman ; but, are we sufficiently expectant concerning 
what God has been training still other peoples to give? Just 
as we may turn to the Teuton or the Slav for musical gifts, 
to the Italian for sensitiveness to color, to the French for 
clarity of thought, and to the Anglo-Saxon for political sense, 
so, as we shall see, we must turn to the Orient or to South 
America for other gifts as precious. 

Nor should we be indifferent to these attainments of other 
peoples. It seems that a stage has been reached in God's 
tuition of the race in which humanity needs the mutual stimu- 
lus, criticism, cooperation, example of its various parts. One 
member cannot solve its problems to the best advantage in 
isolation. As Bernard Lucas puts it : "As far as we can see, 
the period of primary education with its divisions into sepa- 
rate classes and class-rooms is over, and He is gathering His 
children together that they may impart to one another the 
lessons they have learned, and cooperate with Him in larger 
issues."^ East and West may find mutually helpful correc- 
tives in an interchange of emphases — the one, for example, 
on solidarity, the other on individualism. A companionship 
of nations is thus becoming possible which, like friendship 
between those of varied gifts, contains vast possibilities of 
mutual enrichment. 

Most truly from this standpoint is the success of one 
nation the success of all; and the failure of one nation the 
loss of all. Kipling's law of the jungle becomes true for the 
somewhat less savage human folk: 



7 Bernard Lucas, '* Our Task in India," p. 3S» 

38 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-c] 

"For the strength of the pack is the wolf, 
And the strength of the wolf is the pack." 

More stimulating still is the expectation of what these 
gifts may become when transformed and ennobled by Jesus 
Christ. We shall never apprehend all that Christ is until 
we see him bodied forth in every nation. All that he signifies 
is too rich in content to be fully set forth in any single indi- 
vidual or any single race. His full expression in the worth 
and beauty of countless souls is what Tennyson meant by 
the phrase, "the Christ that is to be." The hope of helping 
to unfold new expressions of Christian beauty may be a 
great stimulus to work for other peoples. 

Christian hymn books of the West often contain words by 
Krishna Pal, Carey's first convert, "O thou, my soul, forget 
no more," "Church Melodies," 892 ; Baptist Hymnal, 445 ; or 
that beautiful tribute to our Lord by a daughter of Hindu- 
stan, Ellen Lakhshmi Goreh, in her verses which begin, "In 
the secret of his presence how my soul delights to hide."^ 
Such contributions from other lands suggest that God's white 
light when passed through the prism of time and space reveals 
itself in the primary colors of earth's peoples, the spectrum 
of humanity. 

As in a beautiful stained-glass window the glory of the 
whole comes from the dififerent colored bits arranged in 
thoughtful harmony, so only can the most glorious tribute 
to our God come from his varied children transmitting 
through their very being the light and spirit of their Father. 
Or — to use another figure — I can imagine no more wonderful 
symphony than that made up from the voices of the nations, 
each with its characteristic note, under the great Director^ 
Christ. 

IV 

Let us note some of the racial gifts and attainments 
amongst the peoples of the earth. We shall find that some 
of these attainments supplement the more habitual emphases 
in Western thought and practice. 

India, for example, fairly breathes religion. She has pro- 
duced the religions with which over three hundred and fifty 
million people face life and death. Nor is this capacity dead; 



8 " Hymns of Consecration and Faith," No. 287. 

39 



[ll-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

for a recent authority'"* ©numerates over two score modern 
sects in India today. ''God-intoxicated," some have called 
her. To one experienced missionary India's religious nature 
is "a veritable Nile which waits only for the skill which 
can direct and the energy which can utilize, to transform 
her into the richest provmce in the empire of Christ." See 
those great stone steps leading down to the Ganges ; see 
how that immense throng, in pressing down to the sacred 
waters, has trampled to death two women who happened to 
stumble in the descent. And then imagine, if you can, such 
vast multitudes of people stampeding the churches of our 
country, so that we need be anxious for our safety. One 
must note also the philosophic temperament of India. For 
centuries she has given almost no attention to science or to 
history; but she has, perhaps without an equal, given her 
talent to searching out the metaphysical mysteries of reli- 
gion. This developed gift, when applied to the revelation as 
found in Christ, should yield new visions of truth to us. 

Still further is one impressed with her capacity for con- 
templation. We can hardly remain upon our knees long 
enough to voice a lengthy prayer. But the Hindu has 
learned a poise and quiet and rest in contemplation, to which 
we are strangers. Again, the very name of India recalls 
those thousands of wandering devotees who have left house 
and family and, with little more than a beggar's bowl, spend 
their lives in pilgrimage. Now we cannot admire their 
method of proceeding by successive prostrations to a temple, 
their rolling for miles in self-imposed discipline, their sitting 
amidst fires under India's burning sun ; but the capacity for 
renunciation that is there we can admire. Turn that willing- 
ness for self-abnegation and devotion into constructive chan- 
nels, and the world will yet pause in appreciative wonder. 

Turning now to China we find traits which are full of 
promise for the Kingdom. Note their love of peace; their 
democratic spirit; their tenacity of purpose; their indomitable 
perseverance ; their unlimited patience ; their reverence for 
past values, which has led to an extreme conservatism in the 
past, but nevertheless is a wholesome safeguard against ill- 
considered innovations for the future ; their physical stamina ; 
and their genius for labor and thrift, which is popularly 
embodied in the statement that if you give a Chinese a foot 

9 J. N. Faxquhar, " Modern Religious Movements in India." 

40 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-c] 

of ground and a pint of water he can manage to pull along. 
Those long rows of examination halls have disappeared with 
the passing of China's ancient educational system ; but the 
developed capacity for the grinding application of the Chinese 
student Vemains. The World Missionary Conference at 
Edinburgh still further appreciatively testifies^^ to a suavity 
and tact that will meet any situation and win unexpected 
victory from apparent defeat ; a talent for organization which 
has made the Chinese pastmasters in combinations, guilds, 
and societies of all sorts ; a sense of responsibility which is 
based on a high ideal of the duties of kinship; and great 
susceptibility to the influence of a strong personality, be it 
the missionary or the master whom he is trying to imitate. 
Surely we can rejoice in such qualities in these earth-com- 
panions of ours. 

When we think of Japan one word perhaps comes to all 
of us as embodying the spirit of that people — loyalty. We 
may be shocked at a wife's suicide in order to release her 
husband from domestic ties for his country's welfare — yet we 
admire the spirit. Loyalty for Japan means sinking the indi- 
vidual welfare for the sake of the common weal. Their 
scientific trend of mind — the kind of mind that set up abso- 
lutely new standards in hygienic conditions for their armies 
— will likely make their Christianity, if less emotional, yet 
also less dogmatic than that of our own land. They have 
made courtesy an art. And when we see how they appreciate 
the grain in large panels of unvarnished wood ; how the 
mothers in a railway train hold up their babes to see the 
much-loved plum or cherry blossoms ; or how invariably the 
hillside temple has found just the most fitting location 
amongst the cryptomarias, we can thank God for their love 
of nature, which may yet enable them to help us to behold 
the King in his beauty. 

Latin America contains a civilization rich in the inheritance 
of culture. We shall find there quickness of perception, 
acuteness of analysis, powers of imagination, grace of man- 
ner, and a spirit of chivalry. The Latin-American is willing 
to share with us his passion for the beautiful in art, in music, 
and in literature. 

And how about Africa — has it any gifts for the world? 
A woman recently said, as she handed over a large sum of 

10 "World Missionary Conference," 1910, Vol. I, p. 85. 

41 



[II-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

money to aid an industrial school, *'Yes, I think I must help 
the Negroes ; they laugh so much." To laugh — especially to 
laugh so much — is to do something which needs doing in 
every community and every nation. Dispositions that are 
sunny, optimistic, and that can see the joy in life; tempera- 
ments that are kindly and find none insufferable; capacity 
for contentment in spite of untoward conditions — how can 
the world do .without these? Surely the Negro contributes 
to American life a light-heartedness which otherwise it sadly 
lacks. 

Many hold that the Negro is the only grateful race and say 
that the fidelity shown by the carriers of Livingstone's dead 
body is characteristic of the people. Manifest to all is their 
willingness to forgive and to forget injuries. And who does 
not pay tribute to their talent for music? Visitors come 
back from the commencement exercises at Hampton or 
Tuskegee testifying to the real religious power in those 
Negro melodies in whose recovery we are beginning to take 
an interest. There is, furthermore, a sincerity and reality 
about their religious experience. If you would see this for 
yourself, listen to that African woman praying for a man 
that had just confessed Christ: "O, God, this man has given 
you his 'heart that it may become your house. Now, God, 
sweep your house clean." Or hear the testimony of the head 
of one of our African missions, which has its work far in- 
land, when he says that if he wanted to be warmed in his 
spiritual life he would choose not Keswick or Northfield, but 
a Christian prayer meeting in the heart of Africa, amongst 
a people — he adds — untouched as yet by whites. They un- 
doubtedly need wise direction as to the ends to which reli- 
gion should minister and as to the modes of expression it 
should take. But what we are here emphasizing is their 
capacity for religion. The Baganda Christian, we are told, 
has an intense realization of the personality and the omnip- 
otence of God, and a vivid sense of His love and care for 
his people in all the affairs of life — a real emphasis one 
might expect from a people trained in animism. 

V 

From this week's study we have seen that, in order to 
possess the mind of a Christian world citizen, it is desirable 
franklj^ to recognize the gifts and contributions of other 

42 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-c] 

peoples and to have a profound expectation that their appro- 
priative capacity for the riches of their Father has no known 
limit. It means that the human nature of a distant people 
is put on a level of possibility with our own; it means that 
we do not begrudge the acknowledgment of the moral and 
spiritual values which they have already attained ; it means 
that we are drawn on by what through God's grace mankind 
may become. 

For the individual this view involves that in the progres- 
sive enlargement of the self he shall learn not merely to 
tolerate, but to appreciate and admire. He will recognize 
that each of these peoples has an aspect which they reveal 
only to those they love. 

We look at other peoples through the colored glasses of 
. our own temperaments, but a hard and unsympathetic spirit 
can never disclose another's inner life. Will it not also 
take the metallic ring from much of our social service if 
we pause to acknowledge the diversity of gifts which God 
has bestowed upon his children? When it is no longer pos- 
sible for us, with imagined superiority, to say, "We have 
no need of thee," then the very phrase, social service, is in- 
creasingly displaced by the words "Christian friendship." And 
how are we to maintain a keen and sensitive appreciation 
of the needs of others, apart from a lofty view of their 
capacities and a genuine reverence for their possibilities? 
This view, furthermore, will affect the education of our chil- 
dren, for it will remove one of the grounds for arrogant 
race pride and race prejudice. We will strive to instill in 
them the spirit of brotherhood as an attitude of mind made 
habitual through little courtesies to foreigners in street cars 
or through reactions to world news in the morning's paper. 

For our nation it will mean emphasis upon international 
cooperation and mutual obligation rather than upon mere 
national exaltation. We have been all too slow in realizing 
that we have something to learn from the Orient, from 
Africa, from Latin America. A readiness to acknowledge 
the values in each of the other peoples ought to be one 
of the foundation stones of our larger internationalism. The 
opposite policy of resting back, complacent over our own 
standards, is what leads to national decay, while exaggerated 
racial vanity and unfounded national pretension form the 
very atmosphere of war. And if as a people we have any- 

43 



[II-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

thing to give to other nations, we will succeed better by 
fixing attention not on their weaknesses but rather on their 
capacities for growth. Surely modern philanthropy has 
worked out one lesson that must be taken over by the world 
workers — that if we would do good to another, whether 
an individual or a nation, we must see in that one a brother, 
and must emphasize that brother's possibilities. Not to be- 
lieve in another people and give to them the resulting chance 
leads to imperialism and autocracy. We shall make little 
progress toward a world democracy until nations body forth 
an attitude of mutual respect and sympathy and confident 
expectation toward one another. 

For the Church it will mean the popularization of the 
evidences of racial capacity amongst our citizens. Just as 
it was necessary for the Moravians in the early eighteenth- 
century to prove to the Church that Negroes could be up- 
lifted, so now is it necessary for the Church to show the 
world that backward peoples may become "new creatures." 
As long as men of big business have the underlying convic- 
tion that these peoples are really not worth while, how can 
we expect them to be interested in serious efforts for their 
rehabilitation? The facts of the social and religious results 
of missions must be popularized by the Church. The Church 
should make every effort to bring the press of Christian 
nations up to this Christian standard of the international 
mind. The papers should faithfully mirror the finest spirit 
and ideals of other peoples. They should be bridges across 
the Pacific and tunnels under the Atlantic, by means of 
which the highest interchange possible may eagerly be sought. 

But it is not enough to refrain from dwelling on our inter- 
national dislikes, nor even to become the dispensers of inter- 
racial admirations. As Christians with a fundamentally 
religious conviction of the gifts with which each member is 
endowed, v/e have a still more imperative duty. We must 
call forth and use every worthful faculty in fellow-members 
of the great society. Still more, as Christians in our cor- 
porate capacity as a Church, we must elicit and utilize the 
national gifts of other peoples, however despised and ignored 
by the unchristianized public opinion of dominant Western 
powers these peoples may now be. The Church should 
help the nations to see how many and how varied are the 
members that go to make up a body and how vital for the 

44 



RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLES [II-c] 

common good are aptitudes which we do not possess. The 
Church should fire the imagination of mankind with the 
glorious vision of a democracy of God, into which shall have 
been brought the life and thought and talents of every sec- 
tion of the human race as transformed by Jesus Christ. 

For the foreign missions of the Church, it means for some 
a change m attitude. Phillips Brooks came to a point where 
he saw that boys are white spotted black, not black spotted 
white. Something of this sort of change is needed in our 
attitude to many to whom we go as missionaries. A Japanese 
convert, speaking to an American audience, said, "If we 
heathen are but slightly better than gibbons or chimpanzees, 
the Christians may give up their mission work as a failure. 
It is because we know something of right and wrong, truth 
and falsehood that we are readily brought to the cross of 
Christ. I sincerely believe that the Christian mission based 
upon no higher motive than pity for heathen may have its 
support entirely withdrawn ^v^ithout much detriment either to 
the sender or the sent." More and more the prevalent atti- 
tude of the missionary to the people to whom he goes, some- 
times from compulsion but more often from the more Chris- 
tian spirit of our time, is that of friend and brother rather 
than that of patronizing superiority. 

What an international opportunity the twenty-five thousand 
missionaries have, as they travel back and forth between the 
nations as so many shuttles weaving the fabric of good will ! 
If they are true to their great privilege they will fill their 
reports, addresses, and books not alone with the worst and 
darkest aspects of the people amongst whom they live, but as 
true friends of both East and West will also mutually inter- 
pret the best of each to the other. It is the absence of this 
particular mark of a Christian mind in so much of the mis- 
sionary literature of the past that drives many a leader to 
choose from amongst the supplementary geographical books 
of the common schools for a wholesome impartial picture 
of other lands. It is its presence in Miss Jean Mackenzie's 
"Black Sheep" which makes us long for more such books. 
Conscious only of possessing the most precious Treasure in 
all the world, we will seek to share that Treasure. But in 
sharing we will realize that we have this Treasure through 
no merit of our own, and that on distinctly lesser levels than 
that of Jesus there will be a true interchange. 

45 



[II-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What are the considerations for and against the follow- 
ing propositions; (a) that God has given ten talents to 
the whites but to the yellow and the black races only two 
an(l one? (b) that five and two and one talent men may be 
found fairly equally amongst all races? 

2. Draw two lines, the relative length of which would 
roughly represent your idea of the relative racial attainments 
of Africa and America. 

3. If all mankind has not the capacity for a boundless 
appropriation of the life of God, then what is the rationale 
of the Church's work abroad? If man has this capacity, 
and God the will to help, what prevents the realization of the 
ideal? 

4. How would you criticize this statement: "If a people 
be so low mentally as to be incapable of being trusted with 
leadership at the start, it is better to abandon them for the 
present and instead to concentrate on more strategic fields"? 

5. In what sense was Israel a chosen people? 

6. How would you illustrate and explain the following 
statement: *'The Spirit of Christ will find less to do along 
certain lines in perfecting the adherents of some of the 
ethnic religions than He discovers in many of us, the products 
of generations of imperfectly applied Christianity"? (World 
Missionary Conference, 1910, vol. 9, p. 167). 

7. Would the missionary enterprise today be more success- 
ful if it faced a blank and universal heathenism untouched 
by this ever-present witness in other religions? Why? 

8. Does the recognition of truth and attainments in non- 
Christian peoples weaken or strengthen your missionary in- 
terest? Why? 

9. What is there to criticize in the position that a missionary 
should have as his ideal to learn as well as to teach? 

10. Formulate a statement of the attitude a missionary 
should take toward non-Christian religions. 

11. In what specific ways may Vv^e show our realization that 
our work amongst other peoples must be a continuation of 
the work which the divine Spirit has already accomplished? 

12. What would be the effect of introducing into the prob- 
lems of present-day politics the recognition of distinctive 
national gifts? 

46 



CHAPTER in 

Responsiveness to Human Need 

If, however, these peoples have such great gifts and contri- 
butions as were indicated in the last chapter, w^hy do we need 
to do anything for them? What is the use of worrying 
about their welfare? This brings us to the third element 
in the mind of a world Christian — the capacity for a sympa- 
thetic response to need. 

To test one's capacity for visioning the world's great needs, 
suppose we imagine ourselves high enough up and far enough 
away from our little globe to see it as a whole. Let us 
imagine we are looking back on old Earth from some dis- 
tant point in space. Each day we could see the continents 
brought one after the other before our vision, as the earth 
slowly rotated beneath us. The really significant thing, how- 
ever, would not be oceans and continents, rivers and valleys, 
but living individualities with their joys and sorrows, their 
aspirations and defeats, their racial attainments and deficien- 
cies, their intergroup loyalties and their implacable mutual 
enmities. 

This week, from :uch a distant vantage-point we are going 
to concentrate our thought in sympathetic meditation upon 
the human needs of the folk upon that ball. Each day as 
the globe revolves beneath us, bearing with it its myriad 
bits of life, we will fix our mind on one aspect of mankind's 
deficiency. It will be found that all human need of whatever 
kind can be comprehended under one or the other aspect 
of this sevenfold survey.^ But while perforce in the few 
lines given to each day we must deal in generalizations, let 
us not forget to look closely and see the real flesh-and-blood 
men and women and children to whom these needs are sadly 
the poignant realities of their lives. No attempt has been 
made to give concrete illustrations in this chapter. The 
object is rather to survey the scope of human need. If we 

iSee Albion W. Small, ** General Sociology." 

47 



[III-i] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

are to become world Christians we must increasingly study 
other peoples, their conditions and needs. To this end we 
need outlines into which we can fit our information and 
which will give perspective. 

May God help us to look down upon the world more nearly 
with the tender compassion that he must feel ! And as we 
run over in outline its varied need, and lay our lives along- 
side those of other lands, let us ask continually: Do I care? 
Could I help? Have I anything in my experience to meet 
such conditions? Would Jesus have? 

Third Week, First Day : The Healing of the Nations 

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and tell 
John the things which ye hear and see: the blind receive 
their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, 
and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the 
poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed 
is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in 
me. — Matt, ii : 4-6. 

Have you ever stopped to think how much of the Bible 
is taken up with concerns of health? Over one-fortieth of 
the Old Testament is absorbed in careful rules regarding 
sanitation, contagion, disinfection, the disposition of refuse, 
quarantine, uncleanness, and the enjoining of rest. Health 
was by no means a matter of disregard. Furthermore, it has 
always been a comfort to see what compassion Christ had 
for the physical needs of men. Four-fifths of his recorded 
miracles had to do with the relief of men's bodies. We, too, 
must have the Old Testament's passion for prevention and 
Christ's faith to cure. 

And now, as from our distant vantage-point we lock down 
upon the world, our attention is directed to one favored 
continent. We can see dotted everywhere over its expanse 
health resorts, athletic sports, gymnastics, physical culture, 
hospitals, dispensaries, ambulances, first aid, instructed police, 
. and doctors within ready call of any who need. The labor 
day has been shortened ; domestic science departments have 
been added to the schools ; garbage is removed ; parks and 
playgrounds, baths and waterworks systems abound. Acci- 
dents are safeguarded, dangerous occupations are protected, 
contagious diseases are quarantined, and public and private 

48 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-i] 

sanitation is enforced. We possibly begin to wonder at the 
achievements of mankind in promoting health. 

But wait. Old earth is turning down there and bringing 
other continents into view. And now what a difference ! 
Here is a land crowded with some four hundred millions, 
here another with over three hundred millions, and over 
there a big dark continent, not so crowded, but most desolate 
of all. Only with the closest looking can we detect any of 
the things we saw at first. We know they long for healing, 
for we can make out witch doctors, and medicine men, and 
smallpox gods, and even mere pictures hung up by windows 
to scare away the evil spirits of disease. But how does it 
come that these people are left to fight disease with un- 
scientific and superstitious practices, and that almost every- 
where the majority must die without any competent medical 
assistance? 

Only here and there in these vast countries do we detect 
brave struggles with disease made by representatives sent 
forth by the people of more favored lands. Here, for ex- 
ample, are whole districts where plague is raging. To the 
people it is some mysterious and invisible specter that stalks 
at will from house to house taking whom it chooses. They 
gaze appalled and helpless as one after another is snatched 
away, until as many as a million in a single" year have gone. 
How we rejoice to detect that love has begun its work and 
under the constructive, resourceful faith of certain men and 
women houses have been evacuated, inoculation has been 
given, and sanitation has been started. As a result here 
and there a village — usually a Christian village — stands un- 
scathed amidst the decimated district — an object lesson to 
the whole countryside. 

If we should try to count the representatives of Christian 
forces who as doctors are attempting to share their attain- 
ments in promoting health, v/e would find only a thousand 
such medical missionaries in all the non-Christian world. In 
these isolated centers the blind receive their sight and the 
lame walk, but why should such great expanses be without 
any help? Surely the Maker of it all cannot desire his living 
creatures to be born into and to live under the conditions 
that now exist. Have you a real gospel for the sick and the 
wounded of the world? Have you a vivid picture of the 
world as you would like it to be? 

49 



[III-2] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Third Week, Second Day : The World's Search for 
Bread 

Remove far from me falsehood and lies; 

Give me neither poverty nor riches; 

Feed me with the food that is needful for me: 

Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say. Who is Jehovah? 

Or lest I be poor, and steal, 

And use profanely the name of my God. — Prov. 30:8, 9. 

Give us this day our daily bread. — Matt. 6:11. 

But v^hoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his 
brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from 
him, how doth the love of God abide in him? — I John 3: 17. 

Let us look on another aspect of world need as the earth 
rotates beneath us today. Again we see a continent where 
the methods and the machinery of production and accumula- 
tion have reached extreme development. Tools and capital, 
skill and managerial ability, the use of waste and by-products, 
division of labor, coordination of allied industries, means of 
storing and preserving products, all sorts of rapid transpor- 
tation by water and by land, commercial banking, insurance 
and saving institutions — these are some of the achievements 
of modern nations in producing wealth. 

The need on the v/hole in this great continent is not for 
more property, but for a widespread conviction as to the 
significance of all this material wealth. In the last verse for 
today's reading, as well as in Jesus' parables of the talents 
and the pounds, it is assumed that resources are a trust and 
not absolute property. In endeavoring to develop spirits 
like his own, God has let us have the use of these material 
things. In learning how to use them some of the greatest 
lessons in earth's school are to be learned. When will the 
people of this great continent, wealthy beyond all others, 
learn from Jesus that the highest value of material goods is 
not in their possession but in their use in creating love? 
This continent's greatest economic need is to realize that the 
value of material things lies in their power not to gratify 
personal tastes, but to promote and deepen human fellowship. 

But again, as the earth turns on and other continents come 
into view we see great contrasts. We behold in large portions 
of the non-Christian world the dreadful pressure under which 
they exist, causing them to speak of so many "mouths" in 

50 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-2] 

their family, and in general to construe all the values of life 
in terms of one day's bread. It is not mere depravity of 
soul that causes those mothers in China to expose their little 
girls ; it is in part due to the grinding, ever-present gnawing 
of economic need. The twenty wives of that African polyga- 
mist do not represent mere lust, but in part they stand for 
the cheapest form of labor where known methods do not 
permit one man with one wife economically to exist. Over 
there in that famine-swept province you can see people 
fighting over scraps of food, dogs eating bodies in the street, 
and a woman burying alive the child whose hungry cry she 
can no longer bear. But men in the Yangtze Valley and 
on the plains of India will always remain at the mercy of 
nature until accumulation of property is possible to insure 
them against her irregularities. A certain amount of prop- 
erty seems essential to personal freedom and to all higher 
individuality. 

Thus over vast areas one can see men and women and 
children kept below the poverty line because of ignorance, 
inefficiency, and superstition. To these ancient causes are 
being added the more modern conditions of exploitation and 
over-population, due to the way Western science lowers the 
death rate without checking the birth rate, and to the failure 
of the economically advanced nations to share their construc- 
tive social solutions. 

In most of the non-Christian countries wt can see industrial 
revolution following in the wake of Western civilization. Old 
handicraft systems are giving way to factories, thus causing 
thousands of skilled workmen to readjust. Populations tend 
toward cities with the development of industry, so that we 
see the Orient facing all the evils of congestion, faulty sanita- 
tion, hard working conditions, and low wages. Spinning 
mills and silk filatures employ mere children by the thousands 
every day — no age limit, no physician's certificate, no legis- 
latures limiting hours of work. The trifling sum which 
these poor children bear back with empty rice pails is so 
coveted by competing youth that no complaint is made of 
twelve-hour shifts. How can they be discontented? They 
know no better; parents have never seen the evil effects of 
child labor on individual and society, so that they repeat 
industrial blunders involving physical deterioration, illiteracy, 
industrial inefficiency, and low morals — while those who could 

51 



[III-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN' 

help stand by. Why do these more fortunate ones not share 
the costly and invaluable lessons which have been worked 
out in their own less cataclysmic industrial transition? 

Surely one who believes in the inherent worth of human 
personality and the equal right of each personality with 
every other to existence and to whatever gives existence 
human value must be profoundly moved by conditions which 
leave vast multitudes undervitalized and in abject need. For 
there is an economic level below which a man cannot live 
and be what a child of God should be. A certain control 
over material goods is essential to the appreciation of higher 
goods. And then to realize that above and in and beneath 
the crust of this old earth is enough for all ! 

But we are not here talking about prevention and remedy. 
The simple question is whether you have the capacity of im- 
agination to make these contrasts vivid — so vivid as to be 
painful. How can these differences ever be harmonized in 
the democracy of God until earnest people in greater number 
see and feel the pain of glaring contrasts on this earth? We 
must see the extent and depth of poverty and the blight it 
casts over hosts of our fellow-beings ; we must see as 
starved personalities men meant to be sons of God ; we must 
feel their gray, monotonous existence in toil that is neither 
life nor death. Then will be born in every Christian a 
righteous intolerance and a faith that finds a way. May God 
help us to see, both in the world's need and in our supply, 
the opportunity to act seriously upon our ideal of human 
brotherhood ! 

Third Week, Third Day: Falling Short in Mental 
Stature 

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free. — John 8:32. 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God . . . with all thy 
mind. — Mark 12:30. 

We believe that God desires the unfolding of all the in- 
tellectual powers of man and that any permanent upbuilding 
of Christian society involves the development of the mind. 
But as we look out upon the world what tremendous problems 
lie before us in this one realm of need! Two out of three 
inhabitants of our globe have still to be taught how to read 

52 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-3] 

and write. The United States may send its hundreds of 
teachers to the PhiHppines and make those islands a world 
model for educational progress, but there are a billion more 
who need this help. Picture to yourself all the kindergartens 
and primary schools in the world and realize that these must 
be trebled. Teachers must be found and trained ; methods 
suited to each land must be worked out; educational systems 
must be evolved, coordinated, and financed; supervisors and 
administrators must be developed. The long, long steps 
both of free and of compulsory education must be taken. 
Schooling must not be left as a prerogative of any social or 
religious class, and the very content of education must be 
adjusted to the varying needs and stages of differing peoples, 
so that it will be a real training for the life they must live. 
These are all needs which we, as believers in the democracy 
of God, must vision and take into account. 

Many of our sister nations are awakening, and this renais- 
sance is bringing one of the most significant phenomena of 
our times, namely, a rapid increase in the number of readers 
in the world. This raises, however, new needs for literature 
of the right sort — for periodicals and books, for material 
adapted to the needs of women and children, for books 
and printed matter for schools and colleges, for literature 
that will guide these peoples in the construction of their 
new world order. Where men begin to feel even the indirect 
effect of the spirit of Christ, a host of social and economic 
problems open out and literary material must be provided 
to help in the solution. 

The world has, furthermore, a long way yet to go in mak- 
ing knowledge accessible. Even we in the West have by no 
means ideal conditions, but before mankind can come to its 
own intellectually what vast numbers of institutions must be 
reared up in every land — high schools, colleges, universities, 
chautauquas, extension movements, trade schools, evening 
schools, schools for defectives, museums, libraries, improved 
postal and telegraph and telephone facilities as factors in the 
spread of knowledge, and the like. 

But if this problem of knowledge for the whole of the 
world seems too bafflingly large we may concentrate on what 
the growing Christian communities need. With our accus- 
tomed appeal to the Scriptures and insistence that each person 
should be able to read them for himself, we cannot rest con- 

53 



[III-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

tent with baptized ignorance and illiteracy. Yet of the total 
Christian body in India, for example, only seventeen per cent 
can read and write, and communities amongst the "mass 
movements" may be found where out of 6,000 Christian 
children only two are returned as literate. If independent, 
self-governing Christian communions anywhere are ever to 
be developed, it is of the utmost importance that leaders 
should be provided and trained — and this must be done 
through education. Furthermore, for the promotion of 
Christian worship, for the conduct of their Sunday schools, 
for the interpretation of the Bible, and for the upbuilding of 
their Christian life printed helps must be provided. 

If men are to love God with all their minds these multiform 
needs must be met. What does this mean to you in obliga- 
tion? In opportunity? 

Third Week, Fourth Day : Lack of Harmony in Hu- ' 
man Relationships 

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. — Matt. 22 : 39. 

Even though men of all ages might agree that one should 
love one's neighbor as one's self, the vital consideration, as 
Jesus brought out, lies in the interpretation of what is meant 
by neighbor and what is meant by love. He put new mean- 
ing into these words — into love, intensively; into neighbor, 
extensively. Progress comes in proportion as we see in- 
creasingly deeper, richer interpretations of this great com- 
mand. In this connection it is noteworthy that three-quarters 
of the teaching of Jesus had to do with man's relation to 
fellowman. 

Taking the world at large, human relationships are nowhere 
in greater maladjustment than are those between man and 
woman. Yet the breath of new ambitions is stirring every- 
where amongst the women of the world. It is a long, long 
way, however, that these excluded, secluded, subjugated dis- 
tant sisters of ours have to come ! For sixty years the re- 
marriage of Indian widows has had legal sanction, but public 
opinion still causes 25,000,000 of them to serve out their 
cheerless unhappy lives. We rejoice that ''golden lilies" are 
somewhat less admired than they used to be in some parts 
of China, but foot-binding is still one of the social evils of 

54 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-5] 

that land. Many a helping hand should be ready to assist 
those women who attempt to break the way from a Hindu 
courtyard or a Muhammadan zenana to positions of equality 
of opportunity with men. Child marriage and child-widows, 
polygamy and concubinage, temple-girls and arbitrary divorce 
— these are only some of the familiar and age-long wrongs 
of Vi^omanhood. Needs on so vast a scale can only be com- 
passed by a thoroughgoing revaluation of personality in terms 
of Christ. What increments of love and beauty and good 
may we not expect when the womanhood of the world is 
released and honored and given her democratic chance ! 

Men need to learn what it means to love one another in 
the labor world. Arbitration laws, homestead laws, checks 
on the oppressive power of capitalistic or labor organizations 
are needed the world around. Yet some of the sorest spots 
are in our sister nations where exploitation of labor has had 
no check. "Industrial democracy" is a phrase that must be 
given intelligible content and definite embodiment throughout 
the world, ''beginning at Jerusalem." 

Preeminently impressive in these days are the needs aris- 
ing from lack of obedience to Christ's command amongst the 
nations. Here privileges, rights, and obligations must be 
worked out, a Christian ethic for nations must be evolved, 
and foreign policies and international relations must be com- 
pletely democratized. A problem which especially needs solu- 
tion is that of the relation of nations in the international law 
group to backAvard and dependent peoples. What shall be 
their status and with what motives shall they be approached? 

As you face this aspect of world need, have you the faith 
to believe in the final victory of God's social order? Are 
you willing to help discover and then to establish that order 
without which the greatest good cannot be realized for 
humanity ? 

Third Week, Fifth Day: Arousing Response to 
God's Beauty 

The heavens declare the glory of God; 

And the firmament showeth his handiwork. 

Day unto day uttereth speech, 

And night unto night showeth knowledge. 

There is no speech nor language; 

Their voice is not heard. 

55 



[III-5] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Their line is gone out through all the earth. 

And their words to the end of the world. 

In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, 

Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, 

And rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. — Psalm 

19:1-5. 
One thing have I asked of Jehovah, that will I seek after: 
That I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of 

my life, 
To behold the beauty of Jehovah. — Psalm 27:4. 

Protestantism is not used to looking upon the esthetic 
as comprising a realm of need in the world. Nor perhaps 
would anyone evaluate this need as at all so vital as others 
of the seven v/e are considering. And yet for completeness 
let us realize that response to the wondrous beauty God has 
provided or inspired is part of the conception of a saved 
man. Ability to see God in and to worship God through 
paintings and sculpture, music and architecture, nature and 
literature, is certainly one element in the Kingdom. Art has 
always helped religion by developing forms of decoration 
and of architecture suited to the needs of worship and by 
preserving in picture and in music suggestions of spiritual 
experience. 

But art has a rightful place in this statement of sevenfold 
need for its own sake apart from what it contributes to reli- 
gion. For we are vibratory instruments created for attune- 
ment with beauty and with truth. The intellect can grasp 
only part of experience. Impersonal analysis and inductive 
conclusion do not give all of life. There is a realm where 
response and sympathetic insight must be the ways for deal- 
ing with experience. 

As we think over the varied realms of beauty which God 
has made possible, and measure attainment against man's 
potential capacity, we realize how far short we have come 
from God's ideal for us. The development of human capacity 
for appreciating beauty opens out another cross-section of 
world need. Among God's ministers are those who give 
forms of beauty to the things we use as tools or which in 
various ways make up our environment. The working-girl 
witnessed to a God-given hunger when she said, ''Give us 
bread, but give us roses, too." While acknowledging that 
there are more urgent needs, may it not be possible that 

56 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-6] 

with reference to beauty in library and in conservatory, in 
picture and in building, in garden and in city, it may be said 
to us, "These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the 
other undone" (Luke ii : 42) ? 

Third Week, Sixth Day: The Tragedy of Misdi- 
rected Souls 

And even as they refused to have God in their knowl- 
edge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do 
those things which are not fitting; being filled with all 
unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; 
full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 
backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, 
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without 
understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affec- 
tion, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that 
they that practice such things are worthy of death, not 
only do the same, but also consent with them that prac- 
tice them. — Rom. i : 28-32. 

To Paul, as to every person whose judgment has been 
sharpened through contact with Jesus Christ, the sin of the 
world presents an overwhelming need. In this ugly fact is 
found the world's greatest shortcoming. This has been 
especially plain since 1914. And here we become one with 
all the world, and in all humility are not interested in saying 
whether the mote or the beam is most found in the eyes of 
other peoples. When measuring one's distance from the 
sun it little becomes the man on a mountain-peak to exult 
over his brother in the valley. "For all have sinned, and 
come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). 

We believe that there is such a thing as a growing, vital, 
living, dynamic moral order for the world. We believe that 
God is supremely interested in its growth. We believe that 
for our understanding of this order the significance of Jesus 
Christ is normative. Sin for every one is the placing of 
selfish ends above the claims of love and duty. Sin for the 
one who has known Christ is the departure from the life 
and purpose revealed in him, whether this departure is on 
the part of the individual or of the society. And since the 
life of Christ is best expressed by love, and since the end to 
be supremely sought is the reign of God on earth, the great 
sin is the choosing of any end lower than the Kingdom of 

57 



[III-7] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

God. Sin for the individual means failure to realize God's 
ideal for human nature, and brings the resulting social conse- 
quences of misery, degradation, and death. Sin for society 
— the group or nation — means the failure to organize accord- 
ing to Christ's principles and to embody his spirit in every 
relationship. 

In every land we find sheer badness — deeds and lives that 
are reprehensible and worthy of condemnation. In every 
land we find men and women doing things which are a contra- 
diction of the nature, the powers, the destinies of mankind. 
In every land, whether in spite of much or little light, men 
are making the morally inferior choice. In every land men 
are refusing to conform unto God's will and are disobeying 
his known commands. And these things constitute sin — 
they make abundant life impossible. 

As one goes about the world, tokens abound on every side 
of this burden caused by sin, and the longing for adjustment 
with the Divine. One out of every sixty in India leads the 
fakir's life ; by actual estimate $5,000,000 was spent in a 
single year in a certain Chinese city on idolatrous practices. 
Bells and prayer-wheels and temple drums ; pilgrimages and 
bathing ghats ; smoldering ashes by the Ganges and reiterated 
cries to Amada Buddha or Sita Ram ; idols and asceticism, 
fastings and washings ; stately mosques and rock-cut temples ; 
spires and minarets and high pagodas — all these reveal man's 
greatest universal need, the need of a savior from an exist- 
ence of sin and failure to a more abundant victorious life 
in fellowship with God. 

Have mercy upon us, O God, according to thy lovingkind- 
ness; according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot 
out our transgressions. Wash us thoroughly from our 
iniquity, and cleanse us from our sin; for we acknowledge 
our transgressions; and our sin is ever before us. 

Third Week, Seventh Day: Orphans in a Father's 
World 

And this is life eternal, that they should know thee 
the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even 
Jesus Christ. — John 17:3. 

Today let us center our thought upon the more strictly 
religious needs of men. Once again return to that distant 

58 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-7] 

point in space from which we gaze down on our little orb. 
This time we are not looking at continents or at bodies or 
at schools but at the faiths of men. We make out at once 
four great groups, each containing over a hundred million 
people — Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Muhamma- 
danism. And there are other faiths as well — Taoism, Shinto- 
ism, Judaism, Jainism. 

But the tremendously significant fact is that on this ball 
nineteen hundred years ago the very face of God was uniquely 
revealed to men, and they beheld his glory. In imagination 
you can see a new 'Vay'* which within three centuries spread 
about the Mediterranean basin. After a couple of centuries 
more of assimilation, another era of expansion sent it 
throughout all northern Europe. Finally, in m.odern times 
a third era of Christian witnessing began anew, to share the 
most precious experience of all history. But even now as 
you look down on this old planet you can see trains speeding 
over continents, ships ceaselessly conducting international 
exchange, letters like myriads of shuttles flying between the 
peoples— ryet there remain millions, literally millions, who 
have never heard of Him who came to be the way, the truth, 
and the life. 

Dare one say these other faiths are good enough? All 
but one of those mentioned above were here when Christ 
first came. Any argument that would hold that these religions 
are good enough for mankind now, would indicate that they 
were sufficient then. If the revelation of God in Christ is 
not needed by men who hold these faiths now, it was not 
needed nineteen hundred years ago when these same faiths 
held sway over the destinies of men. Not to see the present- 
day need of the non-Christian faiths is not to see the need 
of the original coming of the Christ. 

In a later chapter we shall be noting with some detail the 
actual deep-lying needs of man which these faiths fail to sup- 
ply. Here we will only emphasize the supremeness of the reli- 
gious hunger of mankind. For while all the needs at which 
we have been looking this week must be met in God's ideal 
democracy, yet we do not evaluate them as being on a level. 
There are needs such that if they remain unmet it profiteth 
a man nothing to gain all the rest. While firmly asserting 
that the removal of each of these seven needs is a part of 
the establishment of the reign of God on earth, yet we hold 

59 



[III-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

that the moral and the reHgious needs are mcomparably 
more far-reaching and eternally vital. Pearl Mountain must 
be reforested ; but there is a growth more precious still to 
start in China. Irrigation canals must be dug in India; 
but there is a water of life that will bring a richer harvest 
than canals can ever supply. Penny-posts and telegraphs and 
telephones must be installed ; but there is a quality of com- 
munication in love that surpasses these. Health and wealth 
and knowledge and the rest, need to be permeated with the 
love that cometh only from God. Is there, therefore, any 
one but Christ who taketh away the sin of the world, and 
who, if loyally loved and fully followed, can justify and 
ennoble and accomplish the sevenfold banishment of world 
need? 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

It will help to a clear intellectual mastery of world need 
if we hold in mind two comprehensive outlines which we 
can apply to the social attainments or needs of any person 
or nation or race. All need may be comprehended under one 
of the following seven heads : Needs in the realm of health, 
needs in the realm of wealth, needs in the realm of knowl- 
edge, of harmonizing human relations, of art, of morals, and 
of religion. Or, in other words, all needs may be classified 
as hygienic, economic, social, scientific, esthetic, moral, or 
religious. We have considered these needs successively in 
our daily studies for the week. 

A second, helpful, sevenfold survey approaches the world 
from the standpoint of the seven differentiated areas into 
which it may be divided. Can you take these areas in suc- 
cession and feel with them in their need? 



The needs of Japan, although directly affecting only one 
twenty-fifth of the human race, yet are urgent just because 
of Japan's place of leadership. Her first great problem is 
one of spiritual adjustment. Our sister nation across the 
Pacific has no greater need than the development of a 
spiritual basis for her great, new, surging life. Three great 
religions are competing with the one really indigenous faith 
for the loyalty of Japan. But of these Buddhism and Con- 

60 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [Ill-c] 

fucianism have already proved inadequate to the strain of 
the new day, as has also the indigenous faith, Shintoism. 
Japanese are asking whether Christianity can provide that 
foundation which they must have for the highest ideals and 
convictions and actions. Many thoughtful leaders hold that 
victory or defeat for Christianity here will have far-reaching 
results for the whole of the Orient. Hence there is an 
especial demand for able, far-sighted, sympathetic, thoroughly 
Christian statesmen to present Christianity to this land. 

A second great set of needs for Japan grows out of the 
replacement of feudalism by industrialism, causing her to 
face in a single generation problems which our civilization 
has been attempting to solve for the past two hundred years. 
The great industrial and commercial centers are growing 
thirteen times as rapidly as the general population. With this 
shift of population come physical deterioration, due to un- 
healthful surroundings, a rapid increase in woman's labor, 
the weakening of restraints associated with old codes and 
customs, and a new craving for excitement and vicious 
pleasures. The very ease with which the few have become 
millionaires has fired the imaginations of a host of young 
aspirants for wealth, so that the trend everywhere is toward 
a materialistic outlook on life. With ^this has developed a 
"romanticism" which amongst the young has set aside many 
of the old restraints, in order to give free play to feeling and 
desire. 

Japan's third great need arises from the fact that she 
has been given the stewardship of subject races. Not only 
has she become directly responsible for Formosa and Korea, 
but the great neighboring nation of China must inevitably 
be affected by influences going forth from Japan. If these 
influences are full of help and inspiration, if Japan can 
through unselfish service win the love and confidence and 
good will of Asiatic peoples, a great leap ahead will be made 
into magnificent national leadership. 

II 

Any person with a scrap of imagination must be stirred 
by the spectacle of China in transition. Here one-fourth of 
human folk have more or less unwillingly given up their age- 
long policy of isolation and are being tossed* and buffeted 
by unfamiliar currents which had their origin in an alien 

6i 



[III-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

civilization. Hence China needs the friendship of unselfish 
peoples. She does not ask for charity, but simply that the 
so-called Christian nations shall do for her what, if the 
conditions were reversed, we would want her to do for us. 
We can let American interests wring unjust concessions from 
her, we can exploit her, but in doing so we shall show our- 
selves still pagan. May the precedent of our return to China 
of an amount of the Boxer indemnity in excess of a just 
sum be the mere beginning of an enduring relation of Chris- 
tian friendship. 

In order to change the mental attitude of centuries as well ' 
as to build bridges and to start great mines, China needs our 
Western science. To educate her millions China needs all 
we can share of educational leadership. To steady China's 
women in their movement toward larger self-realization there 
is needed all through the land the object lesson of the Chris- 
tian home and the sympathy and fellowship of Christian 
sisters. For science, for history, for economics, for social 
solutions, for religion, China must enter the world's great 
school. The question is whether she will find friends v/ith a 
will to share or pirates with a will to prey. 

A new industrial order is beginning to crowd out old house- 
hold trades and alter the predominantly agricultural life of 
the people. When this fourth of the man-power of humanity 
turns its stream of steady, cheap, efficient labor into the 
task of transforming China's immense natural resources, there 
will be need for every social solution and every social ideal 
that Christ has ever inspired in the West. Are we willing 
to share what we have learned and, still better, lead the 
people of China to the only One who can inspire them to 
their own solutions? 

Perhaps the greatest need of China is for strong, able, 
and disinterested leaders. Political revolutions have demon- 
strated that no mere change in the type of governmental 
machinery will heal China. Nothing less than character is 
demanded. But Confucianism, high as its standard has 
been for the past, is proving inadequate to the new demands. 
An irreligious spirit spreads as reverence for old sanctions 
passes away, and the practical genius of the Chinese gives 
materialism an easy victory. There must be a real need here, 
when recent events show to demonstration their readiness 
to receive religion as well as machinery from the West. 

62 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-c] 

III 

In India we see a land cut up by myriad divisive forces and 
yet struggling on under British rule, through increasing con- 
sciousness of nationality, toward self-determination. It is a 
double struggle. On the one hand are immense obstacles to 
nationality to be overcome — the prejudices of Dravidian, 
Indo-Aryan, and Mongoloid racial stocks ; the undemocratic 
compartmental life arising from 3,000 castes; the use of 150 
languages ; a marked tendency to break away from anything 
like good team work; and the intense rivalry of religious 
sects. On the other hand is the struggle which Britain must 
fight out in her own conscience and the results of which 
must be embodied in her policy. Shall Britain think of her 
rule in India as a stewardship from God and launch out into 
the task of fitting India for highest self-realization? Or 
shall she yield only as little and as slowly as selfish expediency 
demands? With both these great parties, which in God's 
providence have been brought together for the working out 
of destiny, we can have the deepest sympath3^ 

But apart from this large political problem India teems 
with social need. Foremost here would be placed the condi- 
tions of the depressed classes, which comprise one out of 
every six of India's 317,000,000. Beneath even the low-caste 
Sudra are these outcastes — little better than serfs of the 
soil, wretched in their poverty and ignorance. The induc- 
tion of these millions into their rights and privileges as 
spiritual beings is one of the reforms from which India has 
hung back. But Christian missions have stirred this class 
with hope, so that in seven well-defined areas they are placing 
themselves in masses under Christian tutelage and leadership. 
Before the Church is thus placed a wide-open, though possibly 
transient, opportunity of ministering to their material, intel- 
lectual, and religious progress and of imparting that sense 
of the dignity and worth of life that comes from the teaching 
and spirit) of Christ. These "mass movements" and their 
needs dominate the missionary situation in India. 

And whose heart is not drawn out to the cause of enrich- 
ing Indian womanhood? Wronged as the woman of India 
has been through seclusion and through ignorance, yet she 
has shown such a patient, humble, unembittered life of self- 
sacrifice and religious devotion that her friends fmd them- 

63 



[IIl-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

selves joyfully expectant of what she can mean when re- 
leased in body, mind, and spirit. This will involve such 
things as the education of women, for now only one in a 
hundred can read and write; marriage reform, for the child 
widow and early marriage still leave their train of social 
evils in that land ; and, above all, the recognition of her 
dignity and worth as a child of God. The work of war relief 
has helped to give an awakened consciousness to India's 
women, so that the demand will soon be vastly greater even 
than at present for an education suited to her needs and 
for ideals which will have power to steady her in the new 
paths upon which she is entering. 

But India's deepest and saddest need is connected with 
the spirit. India has always been characterized by a search 
for God and those who know her best know that nothing else 
will satisfy her. India is hungry for God. Hinduism, how- 
ever, is tottering to its certain fall. It cannot survive the 
impact of Western knowledge and criticism. Can we be 
content to see religious indifferentism settle down upon this 
vast congeries of religious peoples? Or shall we satisfy 
the deepest longing of India's soul by helping her to get a 
clear vision of the face of God in Jesus Christ and of 
abundant life through him? 

IV 

Africa is one vast continent of teeming, complex need. 
Within little more than a generation practically all of Africa 
has passed under European control, bringing enormous 
temptations to rule in the sole interest of the white race, 
but bringing also no less enormous responsibilities for just 
and fair Christian treatment of these backward and child 
peoples. Most pressing of all, perhaps, is the land problem. 
The increase of white immigration, the ruthless grasp of 
syndicated companies, the inability of the old tribal system 
of ownership to stand before modern conceptions of law, the 
difficulty of establishing new systems of individual owner- 
ship, actual laws making it a criminal offence to transfer 
or sell land to a native, the frank conviction that a lower, 
inefficient group should give way to a higher type of civiliza- 
tion — these are some of the causes why the dispossessed 
African is crying out for land. The question is whether he 
is to become a mere serf of the white man with no chance 

64 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [Ul-c] 

to develop a self-respecting independent life of his own; or 
whether Christian public opinion can induce a policy that 
will make central the welfare of the governed. 

Furthermore, Africa confronts a dual labor problem. On 
the one hand, since land has become too crowded for the 
old herds, the pastoral stage must give way to the agricul- 
tural. This presents the very pressing need of educating a 
whole people in modern farming methods. On the other 
hand, the demand of the white man for labor in mines and 
factories, in railways and plantations, is increasingly insistent. 
It is good for the African to be stimulated to change, the 
indolent habits of the village, and the world needs the more 
strenuous service he should be induced to render. But the 
temptation pitilessly to exploit this half-dazed labor rather 
than to treat it in a just and Christian way is proving very 
hard to resist Where great capitalistic undertakings have 
concentrated labor, there is a very urgent call to Christian 
forces to organize social service of the wisest, most scientifi- 
cally constructive kind. Only by the introduction of such a 
spirit will those tens of thousands from the primitive kraals 
be kept from physical and moral destruction in the white 
man's city. 

Africa will long present a challenge to experts to conquer 
disease. Hookworm, sleeping sickness, venereal disease, 
smallpox, and tuberculosis must be controlled. And yet the 
improved communications of modern times have served to 
"spread disease still more widely, so that the various pests 
and fevers for man and beast are no longer confined to com- 
paratively small areas. 

From still another angle we may look out over this vast 
continent and see old methods of social control breaking 
down on every hand. Under the old tribal system the African 
hardly conceived of personal rights as over against the tribe. 
All the influx of Western civilization is removing tribal re- 
straints, disintegrating ancient customary law, and dissipat- 
ing that fear of taboos which provided checks on unsocial 
conduct in the past. What a call this is for us to help prevent 
utter collapse by sharing the higher moral bases without 
which we, too, would go to pieces 1 

The need for instilling the Christian foundations of our 
civilization is made all the more urgent by the advance of 
Islam. This religion, while undoubtedly giving higher social 

65 



[III-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

standards than are now possessed by pagan peoples, yet 
petrifies all progress beyond its level — a level that contains 
glaring deficiencies and comes far short of the highest that 
we know. The need at this point is all the greater because 
it will take us ten years to win back from Islam what as 
pagan could be won for Christ in a single year. We have 
only to let things go on as at present and in two or three 
decades Africa will be Moslem — and we know by humiliating 
and discouraging experience what the winning of a Moslem 
country means and costs. 

V 

Latin America has her closely-drawn caste lines, the prob- 
lem of her great landed estates, her millions of peons 
enslaved through debt, her unassimilated Indian tribes, her 
varied immigrants, and a m^ore or less feudal condition, the 
ramifications of which run through the economic, social, and 
religious life of the people. Because of Spain, the liberating 
influences of the Reformation and the accompanying Renais- 
sance were kept from Latin America for three hundred years. 
Even yet the twenty republics have not recovered from the 
extreme reaction in faith and morals. Probably not five per 
cent of the 50,000 students in the South American universities 
would admit allegiance to any church. Large numbers of 
the educational and political leaders are contemptuously 
antagonistic to all forms of religion. 

VI 

The Near East is a phrase which includes the Turkish 
Empire, the Balkan Peninsula, North Africa, and Persia. 
So far as this includes lands under Moslem rule we have an 
all-too-fresh memory of what it means — ruthless deportations 
and massacres of Armenians, famine and distress, disease 
and suffering. One finds in these countries lack of public 
spirit, mutual suspicion, slavery, extreme poverty on the part 
of the many, and a tendency merely to copy tradition. 

To these six mission areas one may add as a seventh group 
the so-called Christian countries. Their needs are closer 
to us and will not be even outlined in this rapid survey. 

VII 

How can we explain the way in which good people can 

66 






RESPONSIFENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-c] 

ignore zvorld need? William Tames points out an obvious 
answer when he says that we cannot attend to all reality 
at once — that we can be efficient at all only by selecting that 
to which we will attend and ignoring everything else. This 
is why there is not enough misery in India, poverty in China, 
industrial turmoil in Japan, fatalism in Turkey, savagery in 
Africa, or agnosticism in South America but that some people 
can forget it. It is entirely plain how some succeed in 
ignoring these vast realms of need ; it is by attending to 
something else. One reason why gold flowed toward Armenia* 
during the War was that attention was arrested. The over- 
whelming mass of human need in the non-Christian world 
has never similarly caught the imagination of men. 

A v/orld Christian, however, is one who definitely turns 
his attention to the needs of the world. He is the kind 
of a person that will not continue oblivious to how the other 
half lives, but will know and be moved by human need. 
What heretofore has been characteristic of the missionary 
mind will characterize every Christian in the new democracy. 
Only a beginning has been made during the War in respond- 
ing to those who are across the world from us. Such practical 
sympathy should become a habit. 

But even when attention has been turned to these great 
v/orld needs one must fight against a tendency to think of 
these people in mere masses.* Not mankind in the mass, but 
individual men and women and children, whose lives we 
have come to know, grip heart and sympathy. If we fail 
to individualize, so that we know nothing more human than 
"the swarming millions of the East," or the "famine-stricken 
hordes of Asia" we are not likely to see need as it really is. 
It is because geographical magazines and moving pictures 
and travel books leave us without excuse as to the means 
of acquiring this nearer view that our missionary motive 
should be so much stronger than our forefathers'. 

One sometimes wonders whether the "heathen" could be 
real men and women to those who stood behind our early 
missionary enterprise. To read the addresses of those days 
it would seem that the heathen were little more than an 
undifferentiated quantum called souls. There was something _ 
abstract about their appeals. The fitness of Christianity to 
be an absolute religion was considered, the plan of salvation 
was expounded, and finally the utter ruin of all life apart 

67 



[III-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

from Christ was forcibly deduced. The modern missionary- 
appeal, however, presents with vividness the concrete facts 
and situations that need a Savior. Not the a priori and 
theologically-stated necessity is emphasized, so much as the 
actual needs which cry out for what Christ alone can give. 
We need to recognize that there is this transition of appeal. 
We have ceased to think about a vague humanity which by 
theory must be lost; and we are more and more seeing 
actual men and women and families and nations which as a 
matter of fact do supremely need the Christ. It is important 
to recognize that when this transition in the basis of appeal 

. has once begun, it is necessary for it to be completed. If we 
are going to depend for our stimulus on a presentation of 
the actual and visible needs of men for Christ rather than 
on their theoretical and theologically-deduced need of him, 
then we must make earnest with the problem of creating 
sensitiveness to facts of need. 

But after the attention has been turned to the realm of 
need, and after we have individualized rather than simply 
thought en masse, there must be the capacity of imagination 

- to make needs stand out with vividness. A railway track 
does appear nearer together in the distance, but most adults 
have imagination enough to correct this optical effect. Com- 
paratively few, however, have trained themselves to see at 
their true enormity the remediable needs of more backward 
peoples. Again, only a few have been so developed that they 
can scan sets of tables telling about the amount of child 
labor, preventable accidents, or unemployment and from these 
columns catch the significance of the human problem or be 
stirred to find its remedy. Not many are like Brand Whit- 
lock, who after returning from his ambassadorship in Bel- 
gium, said that he could never enter a restaurant and see a 
person crumbling bread thoughtlessly on the tablecloth with- 
out a cold shiver passing through him. The capacity vividly 
to appreciate human need, is a distinct attainment. 

We don't have so much difficulty with the needs close at 
hand. Suppose that next door there is a little child who 
has been grievously crippled for life by infantile paralysis 
and is carried about from place to place each day. Sympathy 
in this case can hardly be considered an attainment. If an 
auto accident occurs before our own door, we respond at 
once with our help, feel bad over it all the afternoon, and 

68 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-c] 

dream about it at night, whether the patient be Chinese, 
African, or Jew. It is, furthermore, just this relative ease 
of response to nearby need that makes the city poor more 
generous than the country poor — the needy in a city touch 
one another more closely and realize more vividly their neigh- 
bors' needs. The test of capacity comes with the more 
distant, less obvious needs of the world. The question is as 
to whether we have developed the field glasses of our im- 
agination so that we can see the practical slavery amongst 
the 30,000 rickshaw coolies of Peking. Or we may be able 
to bring close up in vision the physical hunger of the world, 
but have no power to focus on the famished spirits of men. 

We have learned enough -from the Good Samaritan to re- 
spond to needs that thrust themselves on our roadside. But 
we are Levites and Pharisees with reference to people in 
dire need some few thousand miles away from the road we 
travel ; our money can release service in a distant hospital 
as well as in the inn at which we stop. We hear, for example, 
a man plead that the death rate in India is such that five 
million more people die each year than would thus pass away 
if the preventable diseases were looked after. Is it lack of 
imagination that causes us to pass by on the other side of 
his request for support in his constructive service for these 
people? Let us rejoice that so many people have the power 
of response which enables them to support the more distant 
enterprises of the Church in this or other lands, although 
they have not actually seen the places or peoples for whom 
their resources have been enlisted. 

VIII 

For the missionary enthusiast at home the question must 
arise as to whether he possesses this capacity for sympathetic 
imagination. Is it possible that the activity of presidents 
and secretaries and persons otherwise prominent in mission- 
ary societies may in some cases arise from the mere joy that 
comes from having a task and feeling that one is useful? 
This joy in having a real part in the promotion of one of 
the activities of the community which are acknowledged to 
be important and respectable is perfectly right, but it is not 
necessarily the expression of the missionary consciousness, 
even though dealing with missionary geography and mission- 
ary facts. The activity in this case arises from a laudable 

69 



[III-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

motive that could be satisfied by useful leadership in any 
other respectable branch of service. Many a time in a 
meeting a missionary has pleaded most tenderly and earnestly 
for the pressing, multiform needs of some people whom he 
loves and the chairman has closed the meeting in a way that 
makes one wonder whether imagination has taken her beyond 
the machinery of the meeting to see the significance, in flesh 
and blood and hearts and souls, of the message regarding 
some group on the other side of this earth of ours. Further- 
more, it IS possible for a person in the realm of missions, 
just as for a man in public service, to continue his activity 
from force of habit or because of what people will think 
of him if he stops or fails. The Christian consciousness must 
have as an essential element, however, an active imagination 
which is capable of seeing needs. 

For our nation this mark of an international mind will 
mean that other lands will be looked upon not merely as 
places where trade may be extended. Consuls will report 
on other things than raw materials and opening commercial 
opportunities. If our nation is to be fully Christian, it must 
as such go forth in service. But with this must come not 
only the establishment of precedents for national generosity, 
but the atmosphere in which it will be natural to consider 
the needs of other lands. Capacity for sympathetic appre- 
ciation of need must be national as well as individual. For, 
as the author of "The Great Society" says, it may easily 
prove true that the least amount of love that will sufifice to 
hold together the cities and nations of the new order "may 
be found to require that what school children learn of the 
unseen millions of their fellows shall be, as far as the writers 
of books and the trainers of teachers can make it, the 
truth."^ 

"For the selfish comfort among the wrongs and sorrows of 
men, for our ignorance and indifference concerning the lot 
of others, for the love of ease and pleasure that has blinded 
our eyes, have mercy upon us, O Lord." 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

I. Explain why no amount of perfection in individual quali- 
ties can make amends for a sub-Christian indifference to mal- 
adjustment in the world about you. 

2 Graham Wallas, '* The Great Society," p. 153. 

70 



RESPONSIVENESS TO HUMAN NEED [III-c] 

2. To what extent does the possibility of the attainment 
of Christian character depend upon the attainment of a cer- 
tain physical and intellectual minimum in life? To what 
practical steps should this lead us? 

3. Have you the concentration which enables you to vision, 
beyond the actual, the ideal social order? Sketch some of 
its main features. 

4. Is it the quality of need, or the quantity of need, on 
the mission field that distinguishes the call for service abroad 
from that at home? 

5. If the state of the non-Christian world were such as 
entirely to obscure its need, would the Church's duty to evan- 
gelize the world still stand? Explain. 

6. What impulses, other than a sensitive response to need, 
may keep one active in enterprises of helpfulness? Is the 
absence of such an impulse creditable? 

7. What is the normal Christian reaction to known need? 
Estimate the function of religion in meeting each kind of 
world need. 

8. What needs in Christian work abroad call for laymen? 
How would you justify reforestation as a legitimate use of 
time by a missionary? 

9. What additional thing would best enable us to respond 
to the world need? More knowledge? More love? More 
dynamic? Greater conviction that we have something to 
give ? What ? 

10. What in your opinion is the greatest agency thus far 
in seeing and meeting world need? What has been the 
inspiration back of this agency? 



CHAPTER IV 

Faith in the Pursuant Love of God 

Myself, other folks, and God — so far, we have been con- 
sidering the first two only in this triangular relationship. But 
as we turn from the needs of the world, so vital, so varied, 
so overwhelming, we are confronted by the question, who is 
sufficient for such things? Would it not be madness for 
any man to dream that his one life could cause a ripple upon 
so large a surface and so deep an abyss? Many there are 
who would like to see conditions bettered and needs met, 
but would not dream of purposing to bring this about. Why 
should any form a purpose for what seems so impossible of 
achievement? But is there not some reason why it becomes 
both natural and inevitable, yes, and impelling to set about 
this great task — a reason also for confident hope of success? 
Indeed we shall find all of these when we take into considera- 
tion the third great factor with whom we are so indissolubly 
knit together, and come to understand what is most charac- 
teristic in God. 

Fourth Week, First Day : The Great Attainment 

One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through 
all, and in all. . . . For it is God who worketh in you 
both to will and to work, for his good pleasure. . . . Not 
that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything 
as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God. — 
Eph. 4:6; Phil. 2:13; II Cor. 3:5. 

Except Jehovah build the house, 

They labor in vain that build it: 

Except Jehovah keep the city, 

The watchman waketh but in vain. 

It is vain for you to rise up early, 

To take rest late. 

To eat the bread of toil; 

For so he giveth unto his beloved sleep. . . • 

Jehovah is my light and my salvation; 

Whom shall I fear? 

Jehovah is the strength of my life; 

72 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-i] 

Of whom shall I be afraid? — Psalm 127: i, 2; 27: i. 

Be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be 
affrighted at them: for Jehovah thy God, he it is that 
doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. 
. . . And Jehovah, he it is that doth go before thee; he 
will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake 
thee: fear not, neither be dismayed. . . . Have not I com- 
manded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not 
affrighted, neither be thou dismayed: for Jehovah thy 
God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. ... In all 
thy ways acknowledge him, And he will direct thy paths. 
— Deut. 31:6, 8; Josh. 1:9; Prov. 3:6. 

Homage to personality is of the very essence of democracy. 
It increases our reverence for God to see how in this sense 
he may be considered as democratic. For he has carefully 
avoided dominatmg our personalities. He does not make 
himself so patently obvious that we are compelled to believe 
in him. On the other hand we must, each day, newly affirm 
our faith in God, and develop strength of spiritual life by 
triumphing over what often seems like unreality in this realm. 
Each of us must voluntarily choose, and voluntarily keep 
the great attainment of a living consciousness of God, such 
as is found in today's verses. 

In our personal experience at its highest we have the 
conviction that we have seen, known, and experienced God. 
This conviction is strengthened by the repetition of the ex- 
perience on our part, and especially by confirmatory testimony 
from others in whose competence to judge we have most 
confidence. Gradually our eyes are opened to see God as the 
great Teacher, progressively educating both ourselves and the 
race, in an environment partially good and partially bad, 
but which is moving as we cooperate toward a morally per- 
fect ideal. Furthermore, with Jesus we look on what of 
goodness is found in man, and make the deduction : "How 
much more your Father" (cf. Matt. 7:11). Above all, the 
effect of the personality of Jesus makes it natural to believe 
in God. He sends the world Christian forth, eager to launch 
out in the greatest of all life's ventures — the daring to risk 
everything oil the assumption that we are ''bound up in the 
bundle of life with the Lord Jehovah"; the willingness to 
pray, to plan, to act under the inspiration, friendship, and 
guarantee of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

73 



[IV-2] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Fourth Week, Second Day : Love Taking the Initi- 
ative 

What man of you, having a hundred sheep, and having 
lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in 
the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he 
find it? ... Or what woman having ten pieces of silver, 
if she lose one piece, doth not light a lamp, and sweep 
the house, and seek diligently until she find it? . . . And 
he arose, and came to his father. But while he was yet 
afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with compas- 
sion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. — 
Luke 15: 4, 8, 20. 

But the reality of the fact of God must be filled with con- 
tent. One day, on the plains of India, a missionary was 
asked: ''If you were compelled to choose but one page from 
all the Bible to reveal the heart of Christianity, what one 
would you select?'* The unhesitating answer was: "I would 
unhesitatingly choose that page which tells of the lost sheep, 
the lost coin, and the lost boy." Other religions tell about 
a god who will come to save the righteous and punish the 
wicked. But in Christianity alone has there been revealed 
a God who cares enough to seek out and save those that are 
lost. It used to be easy to believe in a God who would 
destroy great portions of humanity which were thought to 
be evil ; the hard thing was even to conceive of a Deity 
that could take trouble over the lost. Since Christ, however, 
the easy — in fact, to those who have really known him, the 
inevitable — thing is to believe that God cannot be less than he. 

Notice in these parables how the shepherd seeks the sheep 
until he finds it; how the woman seeks the coin until she 
regains it; how the father loves the boy until he comes back 
again to the father's house. In this pursuant love of God 
we find the climax of the revelation of the Father. The 
aggressive, initiating love of God for man is the very core 
of the Christian religion and in it resides our hope for an 
eventually whole and perfect life. Not only will there be 
joy in heaven over every successful venture of love, but God 
is hunting and working and loving until the task is done. 

Experiencing such love in his God, man must learn to love. 
In fellowship with such a person man's self-centered nature 
becomes transformed until he too — like his God — is charac- 

74 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-3] 

terized by a loving pursuit which stops not until the need is 
met. 

Fourth Week, Third Day: A Revolution in Values 

He was despised, and rejected o£ men; a man of sor- 
rows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom 
men hide their face he was despised; and we esteemed 
him not. 

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sor- 
rows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, 
and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgres- 
sions, h© was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement 
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are 
healed. — Isa. 53-3-5- 

One of the finest products of Israel's religion was the con- 
ception that undeserved suffering on the part of the righteous 
might somehow make toward the saving of the wicked. 
Other solutions had attributed all suffering to sin. The newer 
insight perceived that some suffering could be redemptive. 
Righteous and wicked are so bound together that the un- 
deserved suffering of the one may be the saving of the other. 
And so it finally dawned on the consciousness of a few 
leaders that even the longed-for Messiah might not be a 
worldly king restoring Israel to power, but a suffering servant 
through whose affliction others would be saved. 

This insight was one of the great revolutions in judgments 
of values. Here man began to see that unmerited suffering 
in behalf of others could be a characteristic of God, and hence 
could become the divinest privilege of man. Love's greatest 
opportunity very often involves taking on a burden that is 
not merited. In this great passage from Isaiah we find Israel 
realizing that salvation is in one who was stricken, smitten, 
and afflicted. How much vaster is the redemptive power and 
stimulus when we see that it is not man, however exalted, 
but God himself who becomes a suffering servant for the 
world ! Today let this conception of what God is ready to 
do and, in fact, is doing, dominate our approach to the world's 
sin and suffering and need. 

Fourth Week, Fourth Day : God's Readiness to Give 

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; 
knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one 

75 



[IV-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findelh; and 
to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man 
is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf, 
will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will 
give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to 
give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall 
your Father who is in heaven give good things to thoim 
that ask him? — Matt. 7:7-11. 

If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it 
you in my name. — John 16:23. 

Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree 
on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it 
shall be done for them of my Father who is in heaven. — 
Matt. 18: 19. 

It was just as simple as this to Jesus: "If ye being evil 
know how to give — how much more your Father — ." The 
absolute readiness of God to respond was a fundamental 
conception to Jesus. That which needed correction was man's 
reluctance to ask, his refusal even to formulate desire. 

At the ordinary level or potential of our lives we make 
demands upon God and get the response of the ordinary laws 
of nature. Gravitation works whenever called upon ; magnets 
draw, electricity does its marvels, steam drives. At this 
level all of us ask, and receive according to our faith from 
what is really God. What Jesus seemed so eager to have 
us believe is that there is a higher potential or level of faith 
at which we can live, to which God's response will be as 
wonderfully rich and just as ''natural" and inevitable as on 
the more common level. In other words, the response is 
according to our real demand upon God. Ordinary demand 
receives ordinary response. But mountains can be removed 
when there is even a little of that faith which is based on 
the assured character of God and his readiness to give. 

True, Jesus gave us conditions for prayer, certain relation- 
ships which must be right. But instead of impressing his 
disciples with the fact that to pray is difficult, he seemed 
consumed with longing that they should realize a still more 
fundamental truth — how eager the Father is to give to those 
who really ask. 

With a world about us needing reconstruction, should we 
not make it our serious prayer that God will give us the 
confidence in his character that Jesus had, so that wonders 
may be worked in answer to our faith? 

76 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-5] 

Fourth Week, Fifth Day : An Ever-Working God 

The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth 
the Father doing. . . . My Father worketh even until 
now, and I work. — John 5: 19b, 17. 

In answering the criticism of pious, legalists, Jesus opens 
up one of those beautiful windows of his soul through which 
we catch a rare vision of his conception of his Father. To 
Jesus God is one who never rests from an active outgoing* 
of service to mankind. Even on the Sabbath day God con- 
tinues his beneficent work for his children. With absolute 
certainty we may count on him every minute, since rest for 
God does not involve inactivity in love's expression. To 
Jesus the unceasing activity of God for good was a great 
reality. 

Rev. G. A. Johnston Ross tells how he was standing with 
John MacNeill one day in Edinburgh watching the procession 
incident to the opening of the General Assembly of the Na- 
tional Church. In connection with this annual event the King 
sends a Lord High Commissioner who is conducted to the 
assembly hall by a great pageant. The Lord High Commis- 
sioner and his staff, the Moderator, and other officials are 
seated in splendid carriages, drawn by milk-white horses, 
gaily caparisoned, with outriders, trumpeters, banner-bearers 
— a gorgeous spectacle. As the pageant swept by that day, the 
whole business impressed Professor Ross as so absurd in its 
pompous irrelevance to anything Christian, that he said to 
his friend, ''MacNeill, what do you suppose the Lord Jesus 
thinks of this?" For a moment MacNeill did not reply, and 
supposing he had not heard the question. Professor Ross 
looked at his face and saw that he was gazing up into the 
skies, his eyes suffused with tears. Then lapsing into Scotch, 
he said, "He's thinkin' naethin' ava' ; he's ower thrang \ 
(He's thinking nothing at all; he's too busy)." 

May there not come over us, as over these two men, the 
overwhelming thought that God is busy in a great purpose? 
He does not work merely in us and through us. In ways that 
are beyond us and without us God has been silently and 
peacefully doing his work. Would that we could catch his 
great perspective in aim and accomplishment, so that the 
petty would at once be sensed by us as microscopic in con- 
trast with things of supreme worth ! 

77 



[IV -6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Fourth Week, Sixth Day : How Omnipotence Is Set 
Free 

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father*s good 
pleasure to give you the kingdom. — Luke 12:32. 

Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impos- 
sible, but not with God: for all things are possible with 
God. — Mark 10:27. 

Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why 
could not we cast it out? And he saith unto them. Be- 
cause of your little faith: for verily I say unto you. If 
ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say 
unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and 
it shall remove. — Matt. 17: 19, 20. 

Notice the succession of thought in these three statements 
of Jesus: God desires to establish the perfect social order; 
for him nothing is physically impossible; but, being the 
kind of God he is, he cannot give his choicest gifts nor make 
his highest response where there is distrust. God has always 
been ready to give us the Kingdom, and will actually do so 
just as soon as we learn to know and trust him. It was be- 
cause Jesus was one who thus knew and trusted God that in 
him the Kingdom could actually start to come. Jesus' faith 
enabled God to respond to him in a kingdom way. 

Early in his life Jesus must have realized that no one 
else had a consciousness of God and a trust in Him such 
as he himself had. If only others would develop this trust, 
the Kingdom would be here! And so he began a revelation 
of what kingdom trust is; he yearned to instill a knowledge 
of and a confidence in the Father. By miracle, by word, by 
unhesitating acceptance of death that looked to most like 
utter failure, he was leading people to catch his faith in the 
absolute trustworthiness of God. In the life he lived we get 
a glimpse of the way in which the omnipotence of God is 
set free in the one who has unlimited confidence in His 
character and resources. 

What might we not be and do if we had Jesus' conviction 
as to the availability of God! Isn't it just possible that we 
might catch from Jesus faith at least as large as a grain of 
mustard seed? Putting this to the test, that faith could grow. 
Is there really anything better that we can do to prepare our- 
selves for taking a Christian's place in a world of need, than 
acquiring an ever-deepening conviction of the character of 

. 78 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-7] 

God? It will mean a constant return to the one who so 
perfectly manifested the filial spirit, it will mean prayer, 
communion with God, and the daily living out the trust in 
the laboratory of life. The world Christian must get the 
faith that Jesus had, if he would do the works that Jesus 
places upon him. 

Fourth Week, Seventh Day : Reenf orcement for the 
Seemingly Impossible 

And when the servant of the man of God was risen 
early, and gone forth, behold, a host with horses and 
chariots was round about the city. And his servant said 
unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he 
answered, Fear not; for they that are with us are more 
than they that are with them. And Elisha prayed, and 
said, Jehovah, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. 
And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man; and 
he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and 
chariots of fire round about Elisha. — II Kings 6: 15-18. 

The horses and chariots and the great host about Dothan 
were real facts that had to be taken into consideration. But 
there were forces of strength and support to which Elisha's 
servant was blind. Even so today, to waken up to the 
enormous needs of this world is a terrible thing unless we 
also awaken to see the divine reenforcement that is at hand. 
We need some Elisha to open our eyes that we may see. 
Hope and courage will come with the discovery of God. To 
the new world consciousness we must bring a new God con- 
sciousness. 

There have been times with tasks so small that we were 
tempted to believe that we could clear them off in our own 
unaided strength. Not so these days. Miracles are needed. 
Let us thank God for tasks so large that we must open our 
eyes to see the resources that are with God. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 
I 

If we could get a steady deep insight into the character 
and purposes, the desires and resources of our God, then 
unquenchable hope, invincible courage, unhesitating obedi- 

79 



[IV-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ence, and absolute loyalty would be the spontaneous expres- 
sion of our lives. Especially do we need to lay hold of the 
truth that God is preeminently- characterized by forth-going, 
self-sacrificing, resourceful, constructive love. We have come 
to see that this divine solicitude takes within its grasp not 
only the individual, but the organized life of man. 

And all this loving outreach of our God is made in such an 
unpretentious way that we are not forced to notice it. Every 
day he pours his blessings upon us. ''He maketh his sun to 
rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just 
and the unjust" (Matt. 5:44). Yet this wealth of gift is 
so unobtrusively made our own that for many there is a 
certain unreality in the religious life. No doubt in this also 
there is a great love-purpose for us. If it were all too over- 
whelmingly plain, there would not be room for that most 
beautiful belief that friend may have in friend. God is will- 
ing that his hovering love should be unobtrusive, so that there 
may be room for faith, for complete and unwavering confi- 
dence in him. 

And yet there has been one supreme expression which has 
challenged the attention of the world, and will ever pre- 
eminently embody to us the self-giving character of our God. 
The little child named it when in the twilight he came run- 
ning to his mother saying, ''O mother, God has just put out 
his service star." Yes, his single star — for God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son. By the inner neces- 
sity of his nature God is ever loving. He is the kind of a 
God that could not refrain from manifesting himself in 
Jesus, and being found in the form of man could not but 
accept the cross. It is in the cross that we catch such a 
vision of our God and his ways that ever after life's meaning 
and possibilities seem transformed, 

II 

Let us not forget how unique in the thought of men this 
conception of God's character is. Suppose that in contrast 
we try to express in a single word the most characteristic 
thing in the world's great religions. For Muhammadanism, 
we would choose the word submission. In fact, this emphasis 
has given to this great religion one of the names by which 
it is known, 'Islam," which means submission. When Mu- 

80 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-c] 

hammad, at forty years of age and before the beginning of 
his public career, was meditating on a mountain height, the 
hollowness of all idolatry burst in upon him and in contrast 
the greatness of God made a profound impression on him. 
''Allaliu Akbar," that is, God is great, became the watchword 
of his new faith. Before this greatness of God man is as 
dust. If a painter could have one picture only for represent- 
ing Muhammadanism, he would very probably depict a man 
kneeling with his forehead in the dust, betokening submis- 
sion, surrender. 

If we were given but a single word in which to sum up 
Hinduism we would choose karma, for this word stands for 
India's solution of the great problem of suffering, and it has 
dyed her very thought through and through. Karma teaches 
that if one suffers here it is because of evil done in some 
former life ; if one is blessed here it is because of good done 
before this life was entered. In short ''life, in quality as well 
as in quantity, is the accurately meted and altogether fitting 
expiation of the deeds of previous existence."^ 

Buddhists say that their conception of the highest is 
serenity, poise, and freedom from desire, and perhaps for 
them Buddhism could be best summed up in nirvana, that con- 
ception which hovers betv/een rest and extinction, and may 
best be thought of as passionless peace. 

Confucius himself gives lis reciprocity as the single word 
which best describes the system that has held for centuries 
so many millions in China. 

As Christians, however, we are convinced that God is 
characterized by love. If only one word were allowed with 
which to sum up Christianity, love would be chosen by all to 
body forth the conception that comes nearest to the heart of 
what they hold to be truest and highest in God and man. 
And when one really sees this, he bows in reverence before 
that which is for him above all things else divine. We give 
the allegiance of our lives to a Being who not only has 
power but purposes to use that power in service; who, 
although sinned against and neglected, nevertheless tenderly 
hovers over his children with an exhaustless love which wins 
them back to him. The fact is, we have a missionary God. 
We cannot truly think of him as revealed in Christ without 



iP. Deussen, "System des Veddnta" p. 381. 

81 



[IV-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

finding that the missionary idea is dominant in our con- 
ception of him. God is love — love for all — and love that 
costs. Unlike the non-Christian religions, we find the prin- 
ciple and power of recovery from moral evil at the very 
heart of the Christian God. 

Such has not always been man's conception of deity. Men 
long bowed down before the whirlwind, the earthquake, and 
the fire; only here and there a prophet waited for the still 
small voice. But since Christ came, that which compels men 
to bow in deepest reverence is no longer mere invincible 
power or omnipresence or all-inclusive knowledge. We 
might dread the power, but before we fall down in worship 
we would want to know the purpose of the One we call God. 
Before we give our reverence, we want to know the aims 
of this stupendous power back alike of the planet in its orbit 
and of the electron in its tiny flight. It is not the quantity 
of this power but its quality, its direction that is most vital 
to us. 

Ill 

There have been times amidst the attainments of modern 
days when men did not feel the need of God, since they 
found so much that apparently they could do themselves. 
Housing conditions could be bettered, child labor controlled, 
amusements could be censored, preventable accidents could 
be reduced. A whole list of evils that once seemed abso- 
lutely inevitable has been eliminated. The very success of 
social amelioration and of scientific investigation of causes 
and conditions has turned some away from God to a confi- 
dence in human might and power. 

But sooner or later we find that there are tasks that do 
not lie so much on the surface. We find our limitations in 
meeting these deeper needs — "needs of inward renewal, of 
the transformation of character, of deliverance from selfish- 
ness and pettiness and the tyranny of habit; the need of 
inner contentment and peace, of a larger outlook, of a more 
satisfying ambition." It is when we are face to face with- 
these deeper needs in trench or counting-house, in hospital 
or congested quarter that we become painfully conscious of 
our own limitations and are driven to God himself. 

But in still other ways God has been opening up before 
us tasks so prodigious that even the social and philanthropic 

82 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-c] 

attainments of yesterday are not able to give courage for 
them. The nations of the world are to be bound together in 
spite of bitterness, injustice, and racial prejudice. Inter- 
nationalism is to become an attainment, even though national- 
ism be more than ever emphasized. War is to be outgrown. 
Our own lands are to be Christianized, with all the searching 
social and economic adjustments that this will involve. The 
Church is to be reconstructed. A seventh of the human race 
is still to be reached by the Christian message in parts of 
the world as yet unoccupied, and the so-called occupied 
fields are to be manned and worked in a worthy manner. 
Men and women, sufficient in number and adequate in gifts 
and grace, must be found, trained, and sent forth to our 
own and other lands. Money must be raised and harmony 
must be preserved amongst the various forces. 

New conviction as to the character and sufficiency of our 
God is the ultimate foundation for a faith large enough to 
reconstruct a world. The faith Jesus had in the God he 
knew is the only faith big enough for these great tasks. But 
in the presence of his conviction there can be nothing im- 
possible in the reconstruction of the world. There can be 
no disparity between aims and means when we include within 
the means the resources of a God who has a will to serve 
even at cost to self. 

IV 

As a matter of fact, it is just this conviction as to the 
character and the purpose, the desire and the resources of 
our God that has been back of the Christian enterprise of 
missions. Only as men come to understand this character 
will the missionary idea gain its deepest hold. The world 
may laugh at the fact that a cobbler started the modern 
missionary movement, but the union of a consecrated cobbler 
and a God who works for good, made one of the most 
notable life histories the world has ever had. And how can 
the present missionary force of only 25,000 men and women 
dare go forth to change a world? It is because they have 
the deep-laid confidence that all peoples are the objects of 
God's love ; that their uplift is in line with his fundamental 
purposes ; and that therefore every stroke toward that end 
is work that has eternal significance. That is why thousands 
have gone forth to spend their lives working with God. It 

83 



[IV-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

is because of their consciousness that God is at work with 
them that they are enabled to bear isolation and privation 
and homespun toil for the more backward of the earth. 

Many a time a missionary might be tempted to give up 
before indifference or opposition on the field, but this confi- 
dence that God purposes a perfected world gives him strength 
and courage to go ahead. When Morrison was scoffingly 
asked whether he expected to make any impression on the 
vast Chinese Empire, he replied : "No, sir, but I expect God 
will." Morrison could wait seven years for his first convert 
in China ; Carey could work for eight years before baptizing 
Krishna Pal ; Bush and Matoon saw no visible results for 
six years in Bangkok. It was, however, the conviction that 
the unchanging purpose of a mighty God of love was behind 
them that sent them unhesitatingly on. They knew that they 
did not have to work out the world's salvation alone. If 
that were the case they might well have despaired. In such 
disappointing circumstances, however, they could know that 
God was not only divinely reenforcing all the good that 
they had ever visioned for these lands, but God had pre- 
ceded them, and now at last men were faintly sharing in his 
yearning. 

Mary Slessor, who went forth, self-educated, from a Scot- 
tish weaving shed to Africa, had this faith in God. When 
she went to live in a tribe for whom all previous efforts had 
failed, the chief scoffed at the idea of being helped by a 
woman in their midst. "In measuring the woman's power," 
she answered, "you have evidently forgotten to take into 
consideration the woman's God." 

David Livingstone had this faith when he said, "Nothing 
earthly will make me give up my work in despair." Once 
when one of Africa's savage tribes seemed about to put 
Livingstone to death he wrote in his diary: "Felt much tur- 
moil of spirit in view of having all my plans for the welfare 
of this great region and teeming population knocked on the 
head by savages tomorrow. But I read that Jesus came and 
said, 'All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 
Go ye therefore and teach all nations, and lo, I am with 
you alway, even unto the end of the world.' It is the word 
of a gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honour, and 
there is an end on't." To modern prophets, as well as to 
Isaiah, God's voice is heard saying: "Remember ye not the 

84 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-c] 

former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold 
I will do a new thing" (Isa. 43: 18, 19). 

Now every Christian's life should create the impression 
that he is a personal representative of the great Father God, 
who has done marvelous things in the past, and who is eager 
to do still more wonderful things in the future. Have we 
such absolute confidence in the character of God that, with 
Livingstone, we could stake our lives upon its truth? Are 
we even retelling to the rising generation the story of the 
triumphs which have been won by those who have dared 
to take risks in the service of God? 

V 

But some may ask why, if God's character and resources 
are so sufficient, more is not accomplished. Christ gives 
the answer when he said we have not because we ask not. 
In the light of our professed belief in God's readiness to 
give and in view of the experience of prayer, nothing is 
more astounding than the way in which we do not ask. Even 
those who would be regarded by most as unquestionably 
Christian do not keep before themselves big things for which 
they are asking. It is so possible to perceive intellectually 
God's designs and desires and even to be aware of the needs 
of men without actively making God's aims one's own. It is 
because of this lack of cooperation in us that God is blocked. 

Even after all the centuries since Christ showed to us the 
heart of God, how slight a grasp we have of the truth about 
God ! We find it hard to believe in his essential goodness. 
We have not habituated ourselves to place our first reliance 
on the great fact that God is far more deeply and truly inter- 
ested and engaged in the advancement of every good of 
mankind than are we. Yet we are in an ocean of intelligent, 
personal life and love, above us, below, and all around ; and 
this life and love are permeating us, both mentally and bodily, 
and all other beings as well. ''If ye have faith as a grain 
of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove 
hence to yonder place ; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall 
be impossible unto you" (Matt. 17:20). We live and move 
and have our being in One who is infinite in potential re- 
sponsiveness and who only waits to be called into activity 
by our recognition and appropriation of his sufficiency. With 
a world which, as we saw in the last chapter, has a doubly 

85 



[IV-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

sevenfold need, what more colossal blindness is there than 
our lack of faith that God is really Christ-like? 

Can we not get behind these words so that their unique 
significance sinks in upon us? Can we not launch out in a 
supreme adventure, and demonstrate to the world that Christ's 
thought of God is really true and that it brings results? 
What would it not mean to the world if even little nuclei of 
people here and there should be dominated by the conviction 
that the. ultimate Center of our whole universe — the living, 
personal God — is willing wondrous goals for this old earth, 
and that he is blocked simply by our lack of appropriation 
and response. The world Christian can make no greater 
contribution to his generation than faith in the living, loving, 
serving God. Mere . fraternity is being urged by men who 
do not take the name of Christ. Socialists and international- 
ists of many kinds are striving for the fact of brotherhood. 
But back of the fact of brotherhood is the still more signifi- 
cant fact of Fatherhood, and it is faith in this that Christ 
instills. It is this faith, furthermore, that men supremely 
need. They face the stupendous task of social reconstruc- 
tion. Some are starving on their own resources. Chris- 
tianity's incomparable gift to man is that it opens up un- 
fathomed resources of moral renewal, wisdom, energy, and 
love. 

What does the world need more than a contagious con- 
viction of the character of our God? What would bring 
courage and confidence and hope into any field of construc- 
tive effort more than this deep-lying consciousness that at 
the very center of things is Someone who knows and cares, 
is ready to help, and is in fact already working for the best? 
And what greater or more distinctively Christian contribution 
can you make to your fellowmen than to live in this con- 
sciousness, and by your very confidence make it easier for 
others to believe in him ; to act on the conviction that he 
has already taken the initiative in meeting your every need 
as well as those of the w^orld ; and to be stirred with a quiet 
hope because you know that aspiration after the good, the 
beautiful, the true is in line with the power and resources 
of God himself? 

"Verily, verily I say unto you. The Son can do nothing 
of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what 
things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like 

^6 



FAITH IN PURSUANT LOVE OF GOD [IV-c] 

manner" (John 5: 19). What do you see God domg in these 
days? 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What are the things which as a matter of fact give hope 
and courage to those who are working for a better world? 

2. Amongst these, what hypothesis, if it were thoroughly 
accepted, would in your opinion give mankind greatest confi- 
dence and assurance that progress is both possible and prob- 
able? 

3. What motive led Jesus to do so many works of healing? 
Was it the spontaneous impulse of pity, was it to demon- 
strate the resources and goodness of God, or was it some- 
thing else? 

4. If God is like Jesus, why is progress not more sure 
and definite? What is the matter? 

5. How would you answer the contention that conditions 
in non-Christian lands today indicate that God's presence and 
love must be inadequate? 

6. What is your deepest reason for believing in an aggres- 
sive participation by the Church in the formation of a new 
world order? 

7. What elements in the conception of God are unique in 
the Christian religion? 

8. Put in a sentence your conception of the character of 
God. 



87 



CHAPTER V 

The Impulsion of a Great 
Experience 

Some who have read thus far may say, granted that these 
distant peoples have many and great needs ; granted, too, 
that we must become like God in outgoing, generous love 
and service, what have we to give to them? As we read of 
the physical, economic, educational, and other social needs 
of other peoples, we acknowledge that the West possesses a 
knowledge of the technique of civilization that others do 
not have. We can tell them a good bit about sanitation, about 
the application of steam and electricity, about increased pro- 
duction through cooperation and organization. Of course, 
any fairly humanized person must feel a certain obligation 
to share these things. But this is far from the passion and 
intensity of the forth-going impulse of the world Christian. 
Why so much fervor and immediacy about his highest effort 
in world friendship? The answer to this question leads 
us to the very heart of our study : The ultimate dynamic 
empowering the zvorld Christian is the inevitable impulsion 
that arises from experiencing the priceless treasure that is 
found in Jesus Christ. It is this above all other things 
whioh leads to the determination, heroism, and sacrifice that 
must characterize the Christian enterprise of world friend- 
ship. 

Fifth Week, First Day: Twin Springs 

So the woman left her waterpot, and went away into 
the city, and saith to the people, Come, see a man, who 
told me all things that ever I did: can this be the Christ? 
They went out of the city, and were coming to him. . . . 
And from that city many of the Samaritans believed on 
him because of the word of the woman, who testified, He 
told me all things that ever I did. — John 4:28-30, 39. 



IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-2] 

The woman of Samaria certainly knew the needs of the 
people of Sychar ; she also had had a wonderful experience 
with Christ. These two things made the testimony inevitable. 
So it has always been. Right down through the ages you 
will find great missionary awakenings when you have the 
conjunction of these two factors — some fresh vision of the 
world, opening up vast areas of human need, and with this 
a spiritual awakening which makes one vividly* conscious 
of a Source that can satisfy that need. The modern mission- 
ary movement, for example, had its rise on the one hand in ^ 
an enlarged world brought close through the records of great 
voyagers, the political expansion of Great Britain, and a 
marked increase in commercial relations with non-Christian 
nations. On the other hand, it was preceded by the sharpen- 
ing of the national conscience through the bitterly opposed 
but finally successful movement for the abolition of slavery^ 
and by the revival led by Wesley and Whitefield which 
brought in a tremendous spiritual awakening. 

What is true of great corporate movements is, in this case, 
true of the individual. If we feel no impulse to take part 
in a great giving to the world, is it because we do not know 
the world — that is, are ignorant? Or is it because we have 
never really met Jesus Christ on life's wayside, and have 
never actually found in him significance of unparalleled de- 
gree^ — that is, are not fully Christian? Shall w^e not ask 
ourselves this week whether we have ever been sufficiently 
alone with Jesus Christ to permit his life to make its rightful 
impress on our lives? 

Fifth Week, Second Day : The Satisfaction of Five 
Great Needs 

I am the way, the truth, and the life. ... In him was 
life; and the life was the light of men. . . . Grace and 
truth came through Jesus Christ. — John 14:6; 1:4, 17. 

Read over these verses and note the five outstanding things 
which Christ meant to the writer. Name these items over 
thoughtfully and arrange them in the order of your own 
personal appreciation of them. These were incomparable 
values to the writer of this gospel and expressed for him 
the significance of Jesus Christ. 

89 



[V-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Suppose you face the question whether you would have 
been willing to live and die without knowing the Source of 
these five great blessings. What actual difference would it 
have made if you — and your children — had been born amongst 
millions who never heard of Christ? Only by vividly pictur- 
ing to yourself what life for such millions is, can you grasp 
something of the immeasurable loss that deprivation of the 
Christ-life, would have meant. Refusing to be a world Chris- 
tian means inflicting this immeasurable loss upon others who 
have capacity as great as yours for appreciation of these 
'values. For what he has done for you he can do for all. 

But no merely theoretical conception of the Christ will 
send men forth to a world in need. Unless Christ means 
something vital in your living experience, you will lack 
convincing zeal and warmth. Think a moment; then honestly 
answer these two questions : What personal knowledge have 
I of Christ? Has fellowship with him any definite warm 
content in my experience? 

Fifth Week, Third Day: The Unsearchable Riches 
of Christ 

Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the 
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: 
for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count 
them but refuse, that I may gain Christ, and be found 
in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even 
that which is of the law, but that which is through faith 
in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith: 
that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, 
and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed 
unto his death; if by any means I may attain unto the 
resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already ob- 
tained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if 
so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was 
laid hold on by Christ Jesus.- -Phil. 3:8-12. 

The dominating fact in the life of Paul was the magnifi- 
cently transforming experience of contact with Christ. In- 
evitably the riches of His glory became the witness of his life. 
For the living Christ had appealed to his soul and Paul 
had responded with absolute devotion. In Christ Paul found 
all that made life significant, triumphant, and joyous. Peace 
for the past, power for the present, and hope for the future 

90 



IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-4I 

had come to him through Christ. Through him had come 
the assurance of the forgiveness of sins. It was through 
Christ's energizing spirit that he experienced a definite de- 
liverance from a deep-rooted tendency — "for the good which 
I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I 
practise" (Rom. 7:19). It was a momentous thing to be in 
touch with a spiritual power that made life victorious against 
passion and self-will. A great joy over a new freedom and 
harmony that was his with God throbbed within his breast, 
so that witness to its source was as spontaneous as for 
sparkling w^ater to issue from a pure spring. 

Furthermore, in the death of Christ, Paul saw the supreme 
disclosure of God's mind and heart toward an unreconciled 
world, and the conviction sank in upon Paul that in spite of 
sin man can count upon God's love to the uttermost. Hence- 
forth amongst life's certitudes were the divine and limitless 
resources available for the recovery of mankind. Paul could 
no more keep silent about this great conviction and experi- 
ence than could Jeremiah keep God's word in his heart un- 
spoken to the world. "If I say, I will not make mention of 
him, nor speak any more in his name, then there is in my 
heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I 
am weary with forbearing, and I cannot contain" (Jer. 20:9). 
The trouble is that while men hold the truth of the unique 
treasure in Jesus Christ, that truth does not hold them. 
Make a list, if possible, of what vital forces in your life 
have been affected by Christ. That which was Paul's glorious 
experience should be yours and mine. 

Fifth Week, Fourth Day : Limitless Responsibility 
Resulting from Priceless Privilege 

» I am debtor both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both 
to the wise and to the foolish. So, as much as in me 
is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you also that are 
in Rome. 

For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; 
to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. — Rom. i: 14-16. 

Can anyone imagine a person having such a transforming 
experience as Christ brought to Paul without also having an 
impulse to share this treasure with the world? Paul's was 

91 



[V-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

no isolated experience. The peace, the power, the hope that 
had come to him were surely meant to be the birthright of 
every child of God. In Christ, God was in a new way 
yearningly manifesting his very self to men. "God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (II Cor. 5:19). 
And since the bestowal of God's friendship depended on no 
conditions of race or merit, Paul's experience was equally 
available for all the world. Possessing the secret of abun- 
dant life, he felt that he was debtor to Greek and to bar- 
barian, to the wise and to the unwise, until he had shared 
it with them. 'Tor necessity is laid upon me ; for woe is 
unto me, if I preach not the gospel" (I Cor. 9: 16). 

'1 am debtor alike to the Jew and the Greek, 

The mighty apostle cried. 
Traversing continents, souls to seek, 

For the love of the Crucified. 
Centuries, centuries since have sped : 
Millions are perishing: we have Bread; 
But we eat our morsel alone." 

The greater the consciousness of wealth of life received 
through Christ, the greater normally is the impulse to bring 
others into his presence. David Livingstone, in offering him- 
self to the directors of the London Missionary Society, wrote : 
'*My desire is to see the kingdom of my Savior established 
in the hearts of all those who are now in that state in which 
I myself once was." Hudson Taylor, tells how, soon after 
his conversion, he felt the obligation which accompanies true 
gratitude : 'T retired for communion with God, again and 
again confessing grateful love to him who had done every- 
thing for me. I besought him to give me some work to do 
for him, as an outlet for love and gratitude. Well do I 
remember, as in unreserved consecration I put my life, my 
friends, my all upon the altar, the deep solemnity which 
came over my soul with the assurance that my oflfering was 
accepted." Such always has been the spirit of those whom 
Christ has touched ; the possession of a blessing is the rea- 
son for conferring blessing on others. As Henry Martyn 
said, "The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of missions, and 
the nearer we get to him, the more intensely missionary must 
we become." 

92 



1 



IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-5] 

Fifth Week, Fifth Day: One of the Sources of a 
Fruitful Life 

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus 
judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died 
for all, that they that live should no longer live unto 
themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and 
rose again. — II Cor. 5:14, 15. 

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer 
I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which 
I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is 
in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up 
for me. — Gal. 2 : 20. 

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one 
another. — I John 4:11. 

Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving 
each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. — 
Eph. 4:32. 

Another motive at work down through all the ages has 
been gratitude to Jesus Christ, as distinguished from a sense 
of duty or responsibility as found in yesterday's reading. 
''Who' loved me and gave himself for me" — this is what 
moves countless lives to give themselves to the utmost. One 
reason why more do not feel the impulse to go forth to 
others is because they have no sense of gratitude expressing 
itself in service. 

Listen to these passionate words of personal devotion to 
the Christ: "I hear the voice of my Conductor; east and 
west, north and south all are indifferent to me so that I 
may but advance the glory of our Lord." Thus spoke Francis 
Xavier, one of the greatest of Catholic missionaries, who in 
ten short but intense years proclaimed his Master's glory 
in India, in Japan, and in China. 

An early martyr in Japan wrote : "I die full of security and 
joy, trusting to the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, who 
died for me and for whose presence I yearn with all my 
soul — Father Paul Navarro, who in a few hours will be 
burnt for Jesus Christ." 

Similarly Father Ovieda, missionary to Ethiopia, in reply 
to the Pope's suggestion that he should return, on account 
of the frightful hardships of his life, wrote: ''Whatever may 
be the tribulations which surround us, I ardently wish to 

03 



[V-6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

remain on this ungrateful soil, in order to suffer, and per- 
haps to die, for Jesus Christ." 

Polycarp, in his noble answer to the Roman magistrate, 
voiced the same spirit of gratitude and devotion: ''Fourscore 
and six years have I been His servant, and He hath done 
me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who 
saved me ?" 

Have we a place in that noble succession who have not only 
felt, but by deeds have expressed, gratitude to our Savior? 
It is entirely possible for interest in Christian work abroad to 
spring from other motives. The enterprise has now become 
so large and its results so demonstrably great that an intelli- 
gent man can hardly in self-respect be ignorant of them. But 
this may be merely the interest of the well-informed man 
who wants to know what is going on in the world, and not an 
interest which comes from the consciousness of great in- 
debtedness to Christ. On the other hand, many a simple 
woman in an obscure village has this mark of a v/orld Chris- 
tian. She may not know enough to picture a world in need ; 
she may have little appreciation of the capacities of other 
peoples ; her actual expansion of interests may be most limited, 
but she gives, and gives as the widow in the temple, because 
she does have this mark of a world Christian — gratitude to a 
Lord and Master and Savior. 

Fifth Week, Sixth Day: Practical Experience and 
the Primacy of Christ 

And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with 
excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the 
testimony of God. For I determined not to know any- 
thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. — 
I Cor. 2:1, 2. 

In approaching the Corinthians, Paul did not attempt to 
introduce a new philosophy, although they would have enjoyed 
such discussion. He did not use large and impressive lan- 
guage about the destiny of man or the unity of the race. His 
central message was the person, Jesus Christ. 

It is interesting to see how this same decision is reached by 
modern workers amongst other religions. A veteran leader 
in India says : "For years after I became a missionary in 
India I supposed it necessary to prove the truth of Chris- 

94 



IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-7] 

tianity. Nowadays I do not attempt that. I only seek to 
help men to see Christ as he was and spoke and is, that is, 
I try to exhibit his excellence, his betterness, his way of life."^ 
After almost two score years of missionary service another, 
a well-known author and scholar, says : "The missionary mes- 
sage today must, with definiteness and distinctness, be cen- 
tered in Christ Jesus. He is not only the author of our faith, 
he is also its substance. To know him adequately and to 
understand the work which he has wrought for humanity, 
and to interpret in simple forms his divine word and wisdom — 
this is not only the fullest message the world has known, but 
is all-sufficient as a gospel for man under all conditions."^ 

Few things were more striking in the many replies from the 
field to the inquiries of the great Edinburgh Missionary Con- 
ference than the constant reiteration of the answer that the 
most potent of the living forces of Christianity is the his- 
torical Jesus of the gospels. 

For our own families, our own communities, and our own 
nation, have we learned the lesson that came to Paul, and that 
has been ever since coming to our representatives abroad and 
to students of comparative religion? Have we learned to 
place first things first, and act on the primacy of Christ for 
ourselves and for the world? 

Fifth Week, Seventh Day : The Second Touch 

And they come unto Bethsaida. And they bring to him 
a blind man, and beseech him to touch him. And he took 
hold of the blind man by the hand, and brought him out 
of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes, and laid 
his hands upon him, he asked him, Seest thou aught? 
And he looked up, and said, I see men; for I behold them 
as trees, walking. Then again he laid his hands upon his 
eyes; and he looked stedfastly, and was restored, and saw 
all things clearly. And he sent him away to his home, 
saying, Do not even enter into the village. — Mark 8:22-26. 

The blind man after Jesus' first touch saw "men as trees, 
walking." After the second touch, he saw ''every man 
clearly." 

Through the work of the China Forward Evangelistic 

iR. A. Hume, "Missions from the Modern View," p. loi. 
2 J. P. Jones, "The Modern Missionary Challenge," p. 131. 

95 



[V-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Movement, this incident has become symbolic, to Chinese and 
foreign workers alike, of the source of the passionate impul- 
sion of a Christian worker. Many Christians have received 
the first touch ; they see men as trees walking — enrolments, 
adherents, additions, classes, unions, statistics — a forest of 
men. They see men in the mass, but fail to see every man 
clearly. Their need is for the second touch with Christ which 
opens one's eyes to see men one by one, with their individual 
needs and potentialities, failures and successes, joys and 
fears. 

''Lord Christ, Thy second touch our hearts demand. 
Each separate soul to see, his wounds to salve, 
His wants to understand, and lead him home to Thee." 



COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

In the last analysis, the measure of our Christian outreach 
to the world is the measure of our valuation of Jesus Christ. 
If conviction and experience do not acclaim him as the world's 
great good, then of course there is not the urge that comes 
with the consciousness of news superlatively good. But if 
in him we feel we have found a treasure of inestimable worth, 
then the impulse to witness is spontaneous. It is not surpris- 
ing that Zinzendorf, the founder of the great Moravian mis- 
sionary movement, was able to say : "I have but one passion 
and that is Christ." That Chinese was right who drew the 
inference: 'Tf you had really believed in what you tell us 
is the Christian message, you would have been here long ago." 
For, the more we possess of *'the riches of the glory" of 
Jesus Christ, the more shall we feel impelled to witness to 
them. Before we can share Paul's high estimation of the 
privilege of telling others of him, we must, with Paul, know 
"the unsearchable riches of Christ." 

It is because other solutions have been tried and found 
wanting, that men of broad interests, who are pondering over 
the welfare of the world, are turning with conviction cleansed 
through sad experience to Jesus Christ as the one hope of 
this weary world. Not from any narrow proselytism, but 
from a sober judgment as to the only ultimate solution of 
problems which face the individual and the world, do these 
men justify Christian missions in modern times. Confidence 

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IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-c] 

grows that, if men will only do sustained and progressive, 
thinking illuminated by Christ's interpretation of man's being 
and of God's purpose for mankind, both the individual and 
the social complex in which he finds himself enmeshed will 
experience growth of the fullest, richest kind. 

Plainly, what is of such universal value must not be, through 
indifference or selfishness, kept for ourselves alone. ^'It is 
the sincere and deep conviction of my soul," says Phillips 
Brooks, "when I declare, that if the Christian faith does not 
culminate and complete itself in the effort to make Christ 
known to all the world, that faith appears to me to be a 
thoroughly unreal and insignificant thing, destitute of power 
for the single life and incapable of being convincingly proved 
to be true." If Christianity is to have any serious significance 
in my life or the lives of my children, then it ought to have 
significance for every man and for every man's children all 
around the world. 

The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian 
attitude toward Jesus is not the difference of more or less, 
or of better or worse, but the difference of life and death. A 
vivid and deep sense that in him we have something wonder- 
ful and incomparable makes a provincial man into a world 
Christian. 

II 

The pricelessness of the treasure found in Jesus Christ often 
becomes most apparent when we see what religion is where 
there is no knowledge of him. Some people fail to have a 
zealous enthusiasm for him simply because they have never 
vividly realized any situation or condition where his life and 
spirit was not dominant. Brought into the presence of such 
conditions, they at once become aware of the blessings that 
have come to them through Christianity. 

Such was the experience of a young man fresh from college, 
who went out to the mission field for a term of three years 
only. He had been brought up in a Christian home, and had 
been so environed that he hardly knew what it was not to 
be a Christian. It was not until he arrived in a non-Christian 
land and saw what Christianity is not, that the full enthusiasm 
came over him for what Christianity is. It was the realization 
of the uniqueness of the Christian experience, purpose, and 
dynamic that changed him from a "short term" man to a 

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[V-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

regular missionary. He saw more clearly than he had ever 
done in America that his religious experience of faith, de- 
pendence, and love toward the God of righteousness and love, 
as well as the ethical expression in human relationships to 
which this experience led, were peculiarly Christian phe- 
nomena. Submerged as we are here in what is relatively a 
Christian environment, we may easily miss the stimulus to 
our sense of values that comes from contrast. 

A look at four of the greatest religions will deepen our 
sense of the riches in Jesus Christ. 

I. Hinduism is so protean that beliefs as variant as atheism 
and theism, as polytheism and monotheism may rest unchal- 
lenged within its fold. That, however, which no Hindu may 
disregard and still remain a Hindu, is caste. In the past, 
caste has had its use in furnishing certain moral restraints, in 
providing for a certain division of labor, in enabling people 
to unite and cooperate within certain narrow limits, and in 
making poor-laws to some extent unnecessary; but its three 
thousand marriage-tight compartments, its separative tend- 
encies, its limitation of social responsibility to the smaller 
group, its unsocial restrictions make it a terrible handicap in 
attaining any kind of nationalism and practically preclude a 
democracy. 

The most pervasive belief of Hinduism is that man is in- 
volved in a series of rebirths, each successive birth determined, 
however, so inexorably by what has gone before, that moral 
renewal has no place. There is no provision for grace to 
come into the system, so that even the stimulus to go out in 
loving helpfulness to others is cut out at its very root. Popu- 
lar Hinduism furthermore, as one sees on every hand in 
India, means idolatry and polytheism. 

In vedantic thought, on the other hand, Hinduism at its 
highest sets before the soul as the goal of realization such an 
identity with the Supreme that no place is left for individu- 
ality, for freedom, and for responsibility. This supreme is 
the inscrutable "Brahma" of which nothing can be said except 
''neti, neti (not this, not that)." For Brahma cannot be de- 
scribed or known. Thus it happens that, while it may be said 
that the Hindus know better than we that God is, we through 
Christ know better than they what God is. Hence it is not 
strange that the most common prayer rising from the reli- 
gious heart of India is : "From the unreal, lead me to the 

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IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-c] 

Real; from the darkness, lead me to the Light; from death, 
lead me to Immortality." 

From the heart of India, hungry with its long search for 
God, comes marked testimony to the riches she finds in Christ. 
One of the most distinguished Brahmans in South India says 
that "Jesus Christ upon the cross represents the highest type 
and noblest ideal of life that India has ever known." Protab 
Mozamdar, the distinguished leader of the Brahmo-Samaj, 
testifies that ''Christ is a tremendous reality. The destiny of 
India hangs upon the solution of his nature and our relation 
to him." Surely Christ must have meant much to Keshab 
Chandra Sen, one of India's greatest reformers, to cause him 
to burst forth in this glowing tribute : ''It is Christ who rules 
British India, and not the British government. None but 
Christ, none but Christ, none but Christ deserve this bright, 
this precious diadem, and Jesus shall have it." 

As a final testimony to Christ from India let us hear the 
witness of one of the leading Brahmans of Western India, 
a man who has been knighted by the British Government, and 
made a judge. In answer to the question, "What is Jesus 
Christ to you ?" he said : "There in my bedroom hangs the pic- 
ture that is the greatest inspiration of my life, the picture 
of Christ crucified on the cross, that I may see it night and 
morning. Every night before I go to bed I read the Bible. 
I have not only read it through, but have read it again and 
again. My favorite passages are John's gospel and Paul's 
practical epistles to the Corinthians. Every morning from 
six to seven I spend in meditation and prayer and hymns be- 
fore I go out for the day, and I draw my inspiration from Jesus 
Christ, and his power to uplift the outcast and the depressed. 
None other has inspired such social consciousness. I am a 
Christian — though not baptized, not on the records of the 
Christian Church. The Kingdom may not be coming as 
3^ou would like it, but it is coming nevertheless. The ideas 
that lie at the heart of the Christian Gospel are permeating 
every department of Hindu thought and society, and the 
Kingdom is coming in India." 

2. Buddha, with marked insight, taught that the self-seeking 
grasping life is unsaved, and that death produces no essen- 
tially moral change. The cause of man's misery is within 
himself, and it is not necessary for him to look elsewhere for 
salvation. But Buddha's only remedy was the negative one 

qg 



[V-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

of suppressing all desire — a process which forever focuses 
thought on self. Not in nobly giving out the self in some 
objective venture as Christ would have us do, but in quench- 
ing all such outreach does Buddha find salvation. There is thus 
a fundamental pessimism at the bottom of his message, for 
he held that misery is inevitably connected with life in every 
form. In the absence of all constructive optimism and in 
its failure to emphasize the worth and dignity of man, Bud- 
dhism fails to furnish that dynamic without which Buddhist 
lands will never rise. 

Buddha, furthermore, had no message concerning God. In 
this practical ignoring of the existence of deity he left his 
followers with one of their deepest needs unmet. Nothing 
could show more plainly than the history of the development 
of Buddhism how agnosticism and atheism fail to satisfy 
mankind. For the humbler among Buddha's followers even 
now have their animistic worship of demons and nature- 
deities ; while others erect images to Buddha himself, as God 
or an incarnation of God, in order to satisfy the natural 
impulse to worship. In one way or another through the cen- 
turies the people have tried to bring God back into their 
religion, but always the agnostic spirit of Gautama has been 
a heavy drag. Buddhism even in its highest form makes 
Amida either one amongst many gods, or else a mere idea 
of an ideal personality, since Buddhists hold that it is beyond 
man's power to know whether there is really a personal God. 
In Buddhism at the highest we have an idea of a savior, but 
no historic savior. 

In the light of these facts with reference to Buddhism, 
how inevitable is the witness of converted Buddhists to what 
they find in Christ ! An active modern Christian says : "I had 
looked upon Shinto as an ethical system : and as for Buddhism, 
though one can conquer the desires of the world through it, 
yet I felt it did not help me in my longing for the Infinite. 
On taking up the study of Christianity I more and more 
realized the ideal personality of Christ, and at last I had the 
joy of feeling that through the living personality of Christ, I 
came in touch with the Truth. The personality of Christ be- 
came to me as the longed-for light of the sun. If I could 
only gaze on it, surely even my miserable self would be 
drawn upwards." Another, a Japanese lecturer, on hearing 
of the new teaching, sent to Shanghai, secured a copy of the 

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IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-c] 

gospels in Chinese, and read it eagerly. "He was amazed ; in 
all literature he had never met with such a character. Both 
brain and heart were stirred. He fell in love with Jesus, 
the Christ. Without seeing a missionary or knowing of a 
church, he became a Christian." 

3. Confucius did not give a religion to the Chinese. What 
he did give was a national, agnostic system of ethics. Hold- 
ing in a most commendable way that human nature is essen- 
tially and potentially good, Confucius does not impart inspira- 
tion for and expectation of the improvement of that nature. 
Attention is not directed to a gloriously progressive future, 
but minds are saturated with the adage, ''Let today be like 
yesterday." 

Furthermore, Confucius had nothing to teach the common 
people with reference to God. Shang-Ti or High Heaven was 
an impersonal transcendent power that did not concern ordi- 
nary folk. Hence worship and communion with a supreme, 
personal God had no part in the message of Confucius. The 
aspiring human being must be self-sufficient, for no help is 
assured from Shang-Ti. Reverence of ancestors, whose con- 
tinued influence cannot be neglected, takes the place of reli- 
gious worship. 

Confucianism still retains a tremendous hold on the con- 
science and the practice of the entire Far East, but thoughtful 
leaders recognize that it is proving to be inadequate for 
twentieth century civilization. The fundamental fivefold rela- 
tionships of life come out of an autocratic era, and Confucian- 
ism does not possess the springs of life and progress that can 
transform and enlarge these into the democratic relationships 
necessary for today. Yung Tao, the pioneer of modern social 
reform in North China, joins the Christian Church because 
he finds there the abiding inspiration of genuine social re- 
form. Chang Po Ling, an acknowledged leader amongst 
China's modern educationalists, turns to Christ for the ethical 
basis of the education China needs. 

4. In Muhammad we find what was for his time a great 
reformer and religious leader. In an age when a man might 
take any number of wives, he limited the number to four. He 
alleviated the condition of slaves, gave certain legal rights 
to women that they had not had before, and introduced a 
spirit of brotherliness toward fellow-believers that dissolved 
the feud spirit of the time. But at their best, Muhammad's 

lOI 



[V-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

ethical teachings do not rise above those of the Old Testa- 
ment, and no serious student would hold that in spiritual in- 
sight and loftiness of ideal they even approach the teachings 
of Jesus. Tying up his religion inextricably with the legalistic, 
detailed directions of the Koran, Muhammad doomed it to 
static unprogressiveness. Acknowledgedly an advance on the 
conditions of his time — conditions of idolatry, slavery, 
polygamy, and divorce — the authoritative revelation of Mu- 
hammadanism does not permit nor inspire the progressive 
advance that man must make. The modern world has little 
to learn from Muhammad. 

Muhammad himself had undoubtedly qualities of character 
and temperament which drew people to him with intense 
loyalty; but the days following the Mecca period show a dis- 
tinct degeneration of character. Autocracy, vindictiveness, un- 
scrupulous assumption of political power, hard-heartedness 
and cruelty to enemies, sensual propensities which claimed 
divine sanction for wives far in excess of the number allowed 
to common man — these are not elements we need for the 
world today. 

Religiously, his intense conviction of the oneness and 
sovereignity of God is an emphasis of permanent worth, as 
is also his inculcation of the habit of prayer and of surrender 
to God. But Muhammad has done m^ore to deny the existence 
of other gods than to enrich the conception of the character 
of his one God. It is monotheism without the Christ of God, 
and therefore without the God revealed in Christ. The very 
sovereignty of God has been interpreted as Kismet or fate, 
leading on the one side to the zealous abandon of the fanatic, 
or on the other to indolence and lack of initiative. It is a far- 
off, transcendent apotheosis of power that Muhammad gives 
us. But where force is the chief characteristic of God, it is 
not surprising that force should be exalted in social and 
political life. 

Islam leaves the heart unsatisfied with its far-off potentate 
as God. It is highly significant that this religion, whose 
bitterest reaction is against the deification of Christ or of any 
man whatsoever, nevertheless has been driven in self-preserva- 
tion to satisfy man's longing for a divine-human mediator by 
an anti-Islamic adaptation. A convert from Islam, distin- 
guished for devoutness and insight into his former religion, 
holds that ''the life and history of Islam afford the strongest 

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IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-c] 

psychological argument and the mightiest historical proof of 
the inmost irrepressible yearning of the human heart after 
Christ." 

The further one pursues the comparative study of religion 
the more one is convinced of the uniqueness of Christ. No 
other religion has a life comparable in significance with his. 
No other religion has been able to impart life and progress 
and power to the same degree. In that remarkable fourth 
volume of the Report of the World Missionary Conference 
at Edinburgh, where the various non-Christian faiths are so 
sympathetically yet discriminatingly surveyed, the final sum- 
ma^ry asserts that "along with the generous recognition of all 
that is true and good in these religions, there goes also the 
universal and emphatic witness to the absoluteness of the 
Christian faith. This very charity and tolerance, on the other 
hand, makes more impressive the agreement as to the absolute- 
ness and finality of Christ."^ 

Ill 

If from a more familiar angle we note what Jesus Christ 
means to us, we gratefully acknowledge that it is he who 
enables us to believe that the character of God includes the 
element outlined in the last chapter. The unique effect of 
the life of Christ on a person is not merely to impart an idea, 
but also to instill a conviction concerning the existence and 
love of God — something far more difficult. And as amidst 
life's strain we return to him, we find an inward renewal 
of that indubitable assurance of the character and nature of 
God. The world did not really grasp that conception of God's 
essential nature until Christ lived, and taught, and died. For 
as Christians we do not first get our conception of God from 
philosophy or from science, and then, looking at Jesus and 
comparing the two, say, "Jesus is God." As Christians we 
come to God through Jesus Christ. The conception gained 
through him is normative for our religious life. If science 
or philosophy should seem to give returns as to what God is, 
differing from what we find through Christ, we would still, if 
Christian, hold to his God and Father. From this standpoint 
Christianity may be said to be Christ; or perhaps better, it is 
the mind, the heart, the will of the man who has learned to 



3 "World Missionary Conference, 19 lo," Vol. IV., p. 268. 

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[V-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

worship as God the being revealed in Jesus Christ. It is be- 
cause God is such a one as we see in the face of Jesus Christ 
that we know he must be for all the world. 

But the treasure we possess does not consist in the par- 
ticular conception of reality we obtain through Jesus Christ; 
that is, we do not first find God in Jesus Christ and then 
having thus possessed him impart this knowledge to other 
lands. Our treasure is Jesus Christ himself. Inspiration in 
Christianity comes not from a creed but from a person. The 
effect of his personality on us is what Christianity is in 
America ;' the unfettered effect that his personality will have 
in China is what we want Christianity to be in China. The 
gift we bear to China ought not to be our Western Chris- 
tianity, but the Christ who produced our Christianity. "No 
more doctrine," a Japanese pastor said to Drummond, "J^P^n 
wants Christ." These nations want Christ because they, too, 
are beginning to realize that 

« 
*'Men as men, 
Can reach no higher than the Son of God 
The perfect Head and Pattern of mankind. . . . 
The ultimate symbol of Divinity 
How can^we dream of? We have got no sense 
Whereby to seize it: but in Him we touch 
The ultimate symbol of Humanity, 
Humanity that touches the Divine . . . 
For God has other Words for other worlds. 
But for this world, the Word of God is Christ." 

— "The Sermon in the Hospital." 

Nothing is more certain than that the Christian experience 
continues to be rooted in the personality of Christ. "He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9). "No one 
Cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). "No one 
knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither doth any know the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth 
to reveal him" (Matt. 11:27). 

If, then, we wish all people on the earth to think of God 
as forth-streaming, self-sacrificing, resourceful, constructive 
love, we must make it possible for them to come into contact 
with the personality who incarnates this character, and who, 
as a matter of fact, in land after land, has made it easy for 

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IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-c] 

men to accept his conviction concerning the Father. If we 
are interested in building up a world society of men and 
women who will embody toward their fellows the disposition 
of outgoing service that God manifests towards us, then we 
must enable them to come into fellowship with him without 
whom we acknowledge we would utterly fail. 

IV 

It is not God alone, however, that we see in Jesus Christ. 
We get our conception of man through him and in him find 
the only hopeful solution of the relationship of man to man. 
If we select the forces that are making toward the betterment 
of our civilization, and realize how many of these owe their 
strength to his impulse, then we are thankful that our lives 
and those of our wives aad children have been placed in a 
country that has to some extent come under his influence. 
To the extent that we vividly appreciate our indebtedness to 
him do we feel impelled to share this blessing with lands 
where people face life and death without the help that Christ 
brings to your life and mine. Gratitude that principles are 
at work in our civilization, which will eventually enable us 
to take our highest place and attain our noblest mission as a 
people, should have one sure corollary — and that is a generous 
determination that other peoples shall have the privilege of 
evolving under the transforming influence of these same 
principles. 

Jesus has brought a higher estimate of human worth and 
capacity. The boundless possibilities of man stand revealed 
in him. The character of the God of whom we are assured 
in Christ is guarantee for growth of an endless kind. To 
him we owe a new understanding of and faith in humanity, a 
new vision for society, the greatest impulse toward the demo- 
cratic equality of man and woman, the truth which makes 
man free, the freedom not of servants but of friends, and 
the inward impulsion to service which is the highest expres- 
sion to which freedom can be put. It is because he has re- 
vealed the possibilities of a perfected humanity that we can 
never be content to leave any of earth^s groups without this 
knowledge. 

V 

But let us see clearly that our treasure does not consist 

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[V-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

merely in ideas and ideals. It is not primarily the principles 
of Christian ethics which convince us we have a message for 
the world. Other systems have ideals and moral formulae. 

Confucius, for example, three times enunciated the golden 
rule — though in its negative form, ''Do not unto others what 
you would not have them do to you." Laotze came close 
to the highest reach of the Sermon on the Mount when he 
described the way of a good man :, "He will make himself 
correct and (so) transform others. He will pity orphans, 
and compassionate widows ; he will respect the old and cherish 
the young. Even the insect tribes, grass, and trees he should 
not hurt. He ought to pity the malignant tendencies of 
others; to rejoice over their excellencies; to help them in 
their straits ; to rescue them from their perils ; to regard their 
gains as if they were his own, and their losses in the same 
way ; not to publish their shortcomings ; not to vaunt his own 
superiorities ; to put a stop to what is evil, and exalt and 
display what is good ; to yield much, and take little for him- 
self ; to receive insult without resenting it, and honor with an 
appearance of apprehension ; to bestow favors without seek- 
ing for a return, and give to others without an}^ subsequent 
regret ; this is what is called a good man." 

In fact we are told by missionary scholars that practically 
every Christian doctrine we can mention may be found some- 
where in the scriptures of India. No, it is the dynamic that 
they need, and that they find in Jesus. Amidst these high 
truths of the non-Christian world comes the sad lament of 
their choicest souls, embodied, for example, in the words of 
a Hindu, a man of rare religious nature, when he laments 
^to his Christian friend : "Would that I had some one as 
you have to enable me to attain to my aspirations." Many 
of the leaders in China^s confused political world are saying 
with the late President Yuan Shi-Kai : "Confucianism has 
given us valuable principles ; Christianity gives us power." 

From Japan comes the same testimony. A few years ago 
Count Okuma said : "The origin of modern civilization is to 
be found in the teaching of the Sage of Judea, by whom 
alone the moral dynamic is supplied." Mr. Kanzo Uchimura, 
a Buddhist convert, and one of the foremost Christians of 
Japan, testifies : "Indeed I can say with truthfulness that I 
saw good men only in Christendom. Brave men, honest men, 
righteous men are not wanting in heathendom, but I doubt 

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IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-c] 

whether good men — by which I mean those men, summed up 
in that one English word 'gentleman' which has no equiv- 
alent in any other language — I doubt whether such are pos- 
sible without the religion of Jesus Christ to mould us. The 
Christian, God Almighty's gentleman — his is a unique figure 
in this world, indescribable, beautiful, noble, and lovable." 

Simply as a matter of fact it is found the world around 
that the personality of Jesus Christ is the greatest asset man- 
kind has. Power to attain is found in him. Intelligent con- 
verts testify that what they value most in Christ is the dynamic 
actually to embody ideals. 

Over and over again missionaries find that no amount of 
loving teaching about the Father, taken alone, will change the 
lower-leveled life about them. Many have had the experience 
of the missionary who testifies : ''I have seen people greatly 
moved when they heard of the Father's tender love, but I 
have never induced a single one to act any differently until 
he had learned something of Jesus Christ." 

Expressing it psychologically, one may say that mankind is 
by nature capable of becoming what we call Christian, and 
that Christ is the stimulus which above all things else draws 
forth this kind of life. The prize we want to share with 
others is this unique stimulus — the person of Christ. We 
tell others about our experience and share with them the 
explanations of our experience (that is, our theology), only 
that they may reasonably be induced to subject themselves 
to the influence of Jesus Christ, to put themselves steadfastly, 
receptively, and obediently in his presence, to let his life 
play upon theirs, transforming, infilling, giving rebirth. 

VI 

Notice the experience of a Confucianist who at the sugges- 
tion of a Christian friend bought a copy of the New Testa- 
ment and began to read it. At first he thought, "This Jesus 
is a sage. Of course he is not the equal of Confucius. But 
he is worthy to rank as a sage." "Then," he says, "I read 
again and again the life and teachings of Jesus as recorded 
in the gospels, and I compared them with the life and teach- 
ings of Confucius. Confucius did not fall in my estimation. 
On the contrary, the more I studied him the more I admired 
him. But Jesus rose even more. His teaching and his charac- 
ter took hold of me. It increased until I was forced to the 

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[V-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

belief that Confucius is a sage, but that Jesus Christ is God, 
and I want to dedicate my life to his service." 

It is that last sentence that is significant. This Chinese 
convert had an inv^ard impulsion to dedicate his life to his 
new Master's service. If you do not feel passionately exultant 
over the treasure you have in Jesus Christ, is it because you 
have never reflected on his significance in your life? Is it 
because you have never studied about the faiths of other 
lands, in contrast with which the value in Christ comes out 
like a negative in the developer? Or is it that you are merely 
a nominal Christian, and are really not fulfilling the known 
conditions for obtaining the results of association with him 
and with the Father to whom he is the Way? 

Our answer to the call of need will depend upon the state 
of our own inner bank account. If we have gained a life 
companion — a savior from dark forebodings, despair, and fear 
— we are quick to know that others must have him, too. If 
in the trammels of sinful habits we have found a Power to 
save, not only to reenforce the will but to change the affection, 
we are alert to tell of this wonderful Savior, of the dynamic 
which reenforces human efforts, and of the transforming 
power of the Spirit of God. If there have been deserts in 
our own experience, where we cared not for things above the 
sordid round of the day's toil, and if these deserts have been 
made to blossom, we will naturally want the same blessing 
to reach others. 

In fact, each great world need is a test of our own 
spiritual temperature, revealing the degree in which we possess 
understanding and quick response. One can speak to cultured 
audiences of college-trained men and women and find a stony 
heart. On the other hand, simple-minded factory girls have 
shown the most marvelous spirit of responsiveness when told 
the same facts of need. Does one wonder why^this is? Re- 
sponse is not guaranteed by intellect, culture, travel, or the 
scientific spirit. Neither will an elaborate ethical system 
assure one of sympathy that results in action. There is but 
one thing which makes unfailingly for this world passion, 
this identity of interest, this outgoing, self-giving life — and 
that is contact with Jesus Christ. With the distinctive Chris- 
tian experience lacking how can there he enthusiasm f 

When, then, we pause to be receptive and to weigh intelli- 
gently his meaning for the world, we can say, with Henry 

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IMPULSION OF GREAT EXPERIENCE [V-c] 

Churchill King, that Jesus Christ is the most significant person 
in all history; that his life and teachings have more light 
than any other fact of history to throw upon God, upon m.an, 
upon all the varied relations of God and man, and so upon 
the practical problem of daily living in its deepest aspects ; 
that therefore the all-inclusive, indispensable need of men 
is to know him ; and that the one supreme wisdom is to give 
this greatest of all persons his full opportunity with every 
human being and every aspect of organized society. 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. What do we in America need more — new moral ideals, 
or more moral dynamic? What do non-Christian lands most 
need? 

2. What are some of the sources for a great dynamic for 
highest world service? Arrange these in the order of their 
effectiveness upon you. 

3. Choose some one religion and try to outline in a brief 
paragraph what allegiance to it would mean to you. 

4. How has Christ influenced the civic laws of our country 
as compared with the laws of non-Christian lands? 

5. Why do actual converts often exhibit more missionary 
zeal than the second or third or sixty-third generation of 
converts ? 



109 



CHAPTER VI 

Zeal for the Manifestation of God 

Great as is the Good News of a Savior of Mankind, it is 
not sufficient for the world Christian merely to spread this 
message of Jesus. He must embody the message in his own 
life and in society. Jesus taught that all life must proceed 
from within outward. The individual must first prove that 
he has a great Gospel by what it can do in his own heart. He 
must be a living witness to God's power to save from sin 
day by day in prosaic, practical realms. No man will listen 
to words if the character and daily walk behind the words 
belie the speaker's testimony. Emerson was right when he 
said, 'What you are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you 
say." 

And coordinate with the manifestation in the individual 
there must be the corporate embodiment of the message. 
Christians must live together and in relation to all others in 
such a way that the truth of God can manifest itself in human 
love. The great ideal which Jesus brought into the world 
was a way of living together which should be God-like. It 
was not simply a way of living, mark you, but a way of living 
together. This ideal he called the Kingdom of God — the 
Kingdom of Heaven. 

Sixth Week, First Day : "The Glory of God" 

And he said, Show me, I pray thee, thy glory. And 
he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and 
will proclaim the name of Jehovah before thee. . . . And 
one cried unto another, and said. Holy, holy, holy, is 
Jehovah of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. . . . 
And I will set a sign among them, and I will send such 
as escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and 
Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles 
afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen 

no 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-2] 

my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the 
nations. . . . For the earth shall be filled with the knowl- 
edge of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea. 
. . . And blessed be his glorious name for ever; 
And let the whole earth be filled with his glory. 
Amen, and Amen. — Exodus 33: 18, 19; Isa. 6:3; Isa. 66: 19; 
Hab. 2:14; Psalm 72:19. 

We sometimes think of man's glory as residing in the out- 
ward tokens of his prosperity, such as silver or gold or attire. 
In ancient times a nation's glory consisted in its warriors as 
indications of its might. In what way shall we think of the 
glory of God? Is it the aggrandizement of your communion, 
or of any human institution? Is it the majesty, the splendor, 
the magnificence of a king or potentate? 

In the verses for today Israel's prophets conceive God's 
glory to be the manifested perfection of his character. This 
glory may be exhibited in his "handiwork," "his mighty acts," 
"his marvelous works," "his righteousness," and in the natural 
world itself. But the supreme manifestation of his excellence 
is found in personality — "in the face of Jesus Christ" and in 
perfected human nature as found in other individuals and in 
nations. Zeal for the glory of God is, then, an enthusiasm 
for God's manifestation in human life. Down through the 
ages a holy ambition to forward this manifestation has stirred 
the souls of men. Let the beauty and the grandeur of this 
life purpose capture our hearts today. 

Sixth Week, Second Day : God's Method in a World 
Task 

He was in the world, and the world was made through 
him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his 
own, and they that were his own received him not. But 
as many as received him, to them gave he the right to 
become children of God, even to them that believe on his 
name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the 
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word 
became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his 
glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), 
full of grace and truth. — John i: 10-14. 

God chose as his method that of the incarnation. The most 
unique and perfect expression of this method was in his in- 

III 



[VI-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

carnation in the Man of Galilee. But the manifestation of 
the divine in human life is a method God is always using. If 
we would learn for ourselves what is the supremely effective 
expression of the Christian consciousness we must turn to 
God himself. How did he express himself most significantly? 
Through human life. So must we. We cannot surpass the 
wisdom of God. Just as God is the ultimate source of the 
Christian motive, so from God we discover the ultimate 
method of its expression. In fact, Christianity may be said 
to be the perpetual incarnation of God in humanity. 

God's greatest gift to us was not something which he did 
for us, but a revealing of himself to us. Just showing us 
what he is, and making it possible for us to come into trans- 
forming association with him, will forever be his greatest 
contribution to mankind. Self-revelation, and in particular 
the incarnation, is God's great missionary method. And we 
are to be workers with him in the same method.. 

Sixth Week, Third Day: The Obligations of vSon- 
ship 

These things spake Jesus; and lifting up his eyes to 
heaven, he said, Father. . . . My Father and your Father. 
. . . For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these 
are sons of God. . . . But as many as received him, to 
them gave he the right to become children of God. . . . 
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed 
upon us, that we should be called children of God; and 
such we are. . . . For ye received not the spirit of bondage 
again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, 
whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself beareth 
witness with our spirit, that we are children of God. . . . 
And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his 
Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that thou 
art no longer a bondservant, but a son; and if a son, then 
an heir through God. — John 17:1; 20: 17; Rom. 8: 14; John 
1:12; I John 3:1; Rom. 8:15, 16; Gal. 4:6, 7. 

Jesus brought into the world a wonderful and new con- 
sciousness of sonship to God. Behind this consciousness was 
a profoundly new experience of God, and also a revolutionary 
appreciation of the values in every human life. Jesus wanted 
to share this experience with others — in fact he placed no 
limit upon the degree to which we might share his experience. 

112 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-4] 

And in an extraordinary way he has been able to develop 
this same consciousness of sonship in his followers. 

But sonship to Jesus involved being about his Father's busi- 
ness, doing what he saw the Father doing, and this meant 
manifesting a character like God's. He had to become a 
Savior. Do we sufficiently reflect that this is what sonship 
must involve for us, too? We are genuinely saved only as 
we enter into the experience Jesus had. 

Now the manifestation of God in this world of ours is 
conditioned upon man's cooperation. It is not a completed 
and finished world into which man has been introduced. 
God's glory is only in process of being revealed, and he waits 
for full-grown sons to help him. As we see how nature 
waits to be scientifically controlled in behalf of such things 
as production, distribution, and good health; as we see how 
forms of physical beauty await embodiment in useful things 
and houses and community life, one can almost join in Paul's 
rhapsody when he says that "the earnest expectation of the 
creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God," and 
that "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain to- 
gether until now" (Rom. 8:19, 22). We are to be joint 
workers with God in manifesting the beauty of the world and 
of a society of personalities like God. Life is to be environed 
by all that God-like, creative good will in men can do to make 
nature beautiful and helpful. 

Sixth Week, Fourth Day: The Value of the Ob- 
viously Practical 

And there arose also a contention among them, which 
of them was accounted to be greatest. And he said unto 
them, The kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them; 
and they that have authority over them are called Bene- 
factors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is the greater 
among you, let him become as the younger; and he that 
is chief, as he that doth serve. For which is greater, he 
that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that 
sitteth at meat? but I am in the midst of you as he that 
serveth. — Luke 22 : 24-27. 

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into 
his hands, and that he came forth from God, and goeth 
unto God, riseth from supper, and layeth aside his gar- 
ments; and he took a towel and girded himself. Then he 

113 



[VI-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

poureth water into the basin, and began to wash the 
disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith 
he was girded. — John 13-3-5. 

Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, 
that ye should follow his steps. — I Pet. 2:21. 

For I have given you an example, that ye also should 
do as I have done to you. — John 13: 15. 

Another reason why we in our day must seek the embodi- 
ment of the spirit of Jesus, is because the masses always 
question the practicability of any advance in moral standards 
beyond the ordinary level. The teaching of Jesus is wonder- 
fully inspiring, but as never before men are challenging the 
possibility of its practical application to industry, to commerce, 
and to international affairs. Is it possible, for example, to 
love your neighbor as yourself? Would it be advisable if one 
could .^ Can a nation maintain itself on that principle? 

We find it hard to believe unless we see. The average man 
needs the higher level to be embodied — incarnated — before 
him. Understanding our need, God gave us Christ. And his 
dynamic lies not simply in the message he proclaimed, but 
in the fact that he actually lived out that highest ideal for 
man. The glory of God in our own day will be shown as 
we live out the spirit of Jesus, which was ever one of service, 
sacrifice, and love. And he who strives to be a world Chris- 
tian will endeavor to show by his own life — in his college, his 
church, his community, his nation — the practicability of the 
new level to which he bids men come. A Christian must carry 
his message in his face, in his acts, in his home, in all his cor- 
porate life. A missionary's effort is largely in vain unless he 
brings to the new land a fresh incarnation of the Christ spirit. 

Have you ever read how Peter Claver stationed himself at 
Cartagena, where the misery-laden slave ships came in with 
their human freight? He met the slaves, followed them to 
their quarters, and later to their plantations. He comforted, 
fed, and loved them. He visited the lepers. He nursed those 
stricken by smallpox ; he taught them of God and of love. 
And they believed that which they saw in him. Is it any won- 
der that before his death a Christian church had been estab- 
lished, showing how naturally life comes from life? 

Whether it is the unchurched laboring man in America or 
the Hindu in India, what he demands is reality in the one who 

114 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-5] 

comes with help. All could join wijth Mr. Kano of Japan 
when he says: *'We are tired of preaching. We want mission- 
aries who can appeal to the eye gate as well as to the ear 
gate." Isabella Thoburn's life was so winsome in its embodi- 
ment of the Christ spirit that her distinguished pupil, Lilavati 
Singh, wrote : ''Now the cry of my heart is, make me a little 
like her, that people when they see me maj^ say, the spirit of 
Miss Thoburn doth rest upon her." Whoever makes the 
Christian life seem practicable is cooperating with God in the 
manifestation of his life. 

Sixth Week, Fifth Day: The Value of a Call to 
Fellowship 

And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon 
and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the 
sea; for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, 
Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers 
of men. And straightway they left the nets, and followed 
him. And going on a little further, he saw James the 
son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in 
the boat mending the nets. And straightway he called 
them: and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with 
the hired servants, and went after him. — Mark i : 16-20. 

Another great advantage of the personal embodiment of a 
message is that it enables one to invite others to a fellowship, 
rather than to depend on exhortation. We always respond 
more readily to a leader who says "come" than to an officer 
who says "go." Fellowship is one of the deepest hungers 
of our life. And especially as we strive upward for a higher* 
level of life, we crave more than the abstract ideal. We cry 
out for a companion to take the step with us. God, who knows 
the needs of the human heart, gave us Jesus to have fellow- 
ship with us in all our aspirations for the perfect life. It 
would indeed be a lonely task, if we had to struggle after 
some ideal, feeling that no one had gone before. The incarna- 
tion enables us to hear the word "come." 

Now in our lesser w^ay we should embody our message, so 
that we can say to others, "Come." We should be able so to 
live that we can say that "fellowship with us is fellowship with 
the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ" (I John 1 13, Wey- 
mouth's translation). 

115 



[VI-6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Sixth Week, Sixth Day: Known and Read of All 
Men 

Even so let your light shine before men; that they may 
see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in 
heaven. . . . Therefore by their fruits ye 'shall know them. 
. . . Having your behavior seemly among the Gentiles; 
that, v/herein they speak against you as evil-doers, they 
may by your good works, which they behold, glorify God 
in the day of visitation. . . . By this shall all men know 
that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. 
... Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and 
read of all men. — Matt. 5:16; 7:20; I Pet. 2:12; John 
13:35; II Cor. 3:2. 

The world reads the Bible very little compared with the way 
it reads the lives of Christians. For most persons the docu- 
ments of Christianity are human people. The open page of 
every Christian life is read by all who pass. The gospels 
are not four, but ''ten thousand times ten thousand, and thou- 
sands of thousands."^ In China they say: ''There goes the 
Jesus-man !" George Grenf ell's boat, "Peace," on the Congo, 
became known as "God's boat" because it offered violence to 
none. 

Christ made no provision for written testimony, but insisted 
that the sure witness to himself be through living personalities. 
"Let your light so shine ... that they may see . . . and 
glorify your Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 5:16). He 
planned for the embodiment of love to be his great apologetic. 
Paul, fully grasping this truth, warned and stimulated the 
Christians of Corinth by the words, "Ye are our epistle, writ- 
ten in our hearts, known and read of all men" (II Cor. 3:2). 

On that day in China when Dr. Eleanor Chestnut stood 
upon the temple steps awaiting her turn at death from the 
mob who had just murdered her fellow-missionaries, she 
noticed a little lad in the crov/d with an ugly gash on his head. 
There was just time for her to call him to her side, tear off 
a piece of her skirt, and making of it a bandage, bind up his 
wound. It was the last touch of self-forgetful love, before 
they stabbed her and threw her body into the river. Can any 
doubt that this was a page from the real gospel, seen and read 
by all that neighborhood? It was similar to the Master's, 



1 See T. R. Glover, " The Conflict of Religions in the Roman Empire," p. 140. 

116 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-7] 

''Suffer ye them thus far" (Luke 22:51) when, bound. and 
ready to be led forth to death, he stretched out his hand to 
heal the wound which Peter had inflicted on his persecutor. 

Someone has said 'Treaching is a breathing." If preaching 
could always be a natural self-revelation instead of elaborate 
theories eloquently worked out for special occasions, the pro- 
fession of the pulpit would take on its old-time significance. 
Back of the profession of lips niust be the strength of a con- 
sistent life. One Christian worker made it a habit of his life, 
whenever he was asked to deliver a convention address, to 
prepare it three weeks ahead and to live it out first. Thus 
he was able to see whether he was honestly embodying his 
message. 

How often we would like to put the burden of the world's 
recovery on a sacred book, or on fundamental proofs, or on 
God — on something quite external to the life we lead — but 
we cannot avoid the responsibility Christ puts upon us. ''Ye 
are my witnesses." 

Sixth Week, Seventh Day: The Influence of a 
Christianized Community 

We give thanks to God always for you all, making men- 
tion of you in our prayers; remembering without ceasing 
your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope 
in our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, o . . 
And ye became imitators of us, and of the Lord, having 
received the word in much affliction, with joy of the 
Holy Spirit; so that ye became an ensample to all that 
believe in Macedonia and in Achaia. For from you hath 
sounded forth the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia 
and Achaia, but in every place your faith to God-ward is 
gone forth; so that we need not to speak anything. For 
they themselves report concerning us what manner of 
entering in we had unto you; and how ye turned unto God 
from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait 
for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, 
even Jesus, who delivereth us from the wrath to come. — 
I Thess. 1:2, 3, 6-10. 

The way in which a despised and neglected little group — 
called in derision "Christians" — could in three centuries win 
to their standard the Roman Empire has always stirred us. 
Historians agree that one of the strongest factors in this 

117 



[VI-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

process was the love, actually embodied in the little Christian 
communities, and not merely talked about. Lucian said : "They 
become incredibly alert when anything occurs that affects their 
common interests. On such occasions no expense is grudged." 
TertuUian quotes from hostile testimony the remarks, "See 
how they love one another," and "See how they are prepared 
to die for one another." When plague raged, Cyprian ex- 
horted his flock to assist the heathen as well as the household 
of faith. And Eusebius, writing of a similar epidemic, said, 
"Then did they show themselves to the heathen in the clearest 
light." Besides attending to the dead, the Christians ''gath- 
ered in one spot all who were afflicted by hunger throughout 
the whole city, and gave bread to them all. When this became 
known, people glorified the Christian God." 

Christianity overcame because the Christian beat the pagan 
in living, in dying, and in thinking — he out-lived him, out-died 
him, and out-thought him. It is just as true today that wher- 
ever Christians incarnate the power and love of God in their 
own lives, Christ's Kingdom makes sure advance. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



It is not enough that we should examine into the character 
of God, and admire and appreciate and talk of the wonder of 
his nature revealed most fully in Jesus Christ. Nor is it 
enough that we gather from him new courage and hope for 
ourselves. // God in his essential being is characterised by 
forth-going, serving love, this necessarily determines the char- 
acter which must progressively be incarnated in us. Salva- 
tion means becoming like God; means making God's cause 
our own. The future of our religion depends upon the extent 
to which those who call themselves Christians recognize the 
obligations in this fact. Not the mere recital of "Lord, Lord," 
but the actual doing of the Father's will is what Christ taught. 
He never regarded life as a vessel merely to be selfishly filled, 
but as a power to be used. It is not, therefore, a matter of 
indifferent choice whether we enter into a life of self-sacrific- 
ing service. It is a part of salvation itself. For it is only 
by becoming like God in character that there is any blessed- 
ness in store for us. We may as well face the fact that we 
shall never become completely saved men and women until we, 

ii8 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-c] 

too, have learned to love in a self-giving, unrequited way. 
This involves the development of an attitude and disposition 
toward our fellows of God-like, active love. "To be saved is 
to become a savior." 

This truth was touchingly grasped by that old woman, men- 
tioned by Pastor Hsi, who shrank from baptism although she 
clearly was a believer. Her reason for not being baptized 
was that being a Christian meant to go into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature. She was, as a matter 
of fact, doing all she could to tell others of Christ, but she 
felt too old ''to go into all the world." This simple Chinese 
woman, however, saw that enthusiasm for an outgoing life 
is no elective that can be chosen or rejected by the Christian. 
It is the concern of every man. For us, as for that old 
woman, to be a Christian and not to be interested in love that 
goes to the ends of the earth should be a contradiction in 
terms. 

In almost every mission field, with notable exceptions such 
as Korea, there has been difficulty in stimulating the propaga- 
tion of Christianity apart from foreign initiative — in getting 
the new Christian communities to see that the Gospel is theirs 
to pass on. May this not, in part at least, be due to a pre- 
sentation of salvation as resulting from correct belief? The 
emphasis in some places has been placed so heavily on 
ecclesiastical affairs and on the acceptance of theological 
orthodoxy, that all too many converts have been introduced 
into a Christianity of mere machinery and creeds and dogmas, 
God's great work for man, for example, is thought of as a 
juridical procedure transacted entirely apart from the indi- 
vidual, the benefits of which are secured merely by the con- 
fession of faith in Jesus Christ. Men have failed to emphasize 
sufficiently that Jesus is the way — the way to man's becoming 
perfect as God is perfect. Three centuries of emphasis on 
salvation as correct belief, with reference to an operation by 
God from outside upon a world dwelling apart from him, 
have failed to make our country what a Christian land should 
be. Can one expect any better results from the same mis- 
taken emphasis, when taken to a non-Christian land? What 
the people of those lands need, and what we need, is a more 
vivid realization of the character of God, of salvation as be- 
coming like him, and of Jesus as the Savior in that he makes 
that kind of life possible. 

119 



[VI-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

We like to say that man was made in God's image. As 
an account of our origin this statement is meager and barren. 
It is not so much a theological proposition to be accepted, as 
a practical program to be realized. Mankind needs a pro- 
found faith that human life can exhibit God's image here 
and now. We must respond to the great fact of God's indwell- 
ing in human life — of which fact the incarnation in Jesus 
was the supreme example. 

II 

The embodiment of the character of God in the common life 
of man has always had immense transforming power. It is 
when the mind of Christ is actually expressed in action that 
power is manifested. All over the world this truth is working. 

One day a missionary was making his way up from the hot 
plains of India to a hill station. He had not gone far when 
he heard the old coolie behind him complain in panting voice, 
*'Sahib, I am about to die. The load is so heavy." "All right," 
said the missionary, "I'll take your load, and you take mine." 
They had not gone far this way until a sniffling w^as heard 
from behind. "What's wrong, hhaif" "Why, Sahib, have 
you done this? No one ever took the heavy load for me be- 
fore." It was not hard, as they sat down by the roadside, to 
touch the old coolie's heart by the story of the One who 
for love's sake always takes the heavy end. 

A young man from Afghanistan had for years scorned all 
Christian preaching, and had argued bitterly against Chris- 
tianity. Finally a woman doctor visited Peshawar, met the 
youth, and immediately felt led to work and pray for his con- 
version. She made no attempt to argue with him, but through 
acts of kindness at last melted his heart. As a Christian 
worker at the present time he says, "My people are hungry 
for such love — everything is gained by love." 

In another part of India a missionary was making a night 
journey through the jungle. His only companions were some 
Hindus and Muhammadans who were in carts ahead. All at 
once a piercing cry rent the air. Their low-caste torch bearer 
had been bitten by a cobra. Not a hand was raised to help 
the outcaste by those nearest to him, as he lay writhing in 
pain, and expecting to die. There was no time to lose — the 
missionary washed the foot, and himself sucked the poison 
from the wound. Is it any wonder that after this, 'against 

120 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VT-c] 

a fresh and compelling background, every audience in that 
district listened to the story of the love of God? 

Worth a dozen sermons was the simple act of a missionary 
in Japan. While he v/as riding in his jinriksha one day, his 
coolie stumbled, fell, and broke his leg. Without hesitation 
the missionary put the coolie in the carriage and, taking his 
place between the shafts, bore him back eleven miles to their 
starting-point. 

A Japanese student after four years in America was writ- 
ing of what he wanted to take back to Japan : *1 feel we 
must still look to the West for personality in its beauty and 
magnitude. I have seen some examples of lofty personality 
and through them have caught a vision of the high ideal to 
which we may attain in our character-building. This demon- 
stration and this vision of personality, which I have seen in 
America, is the first thing I would bring back to Japan." 
Similarly a Chinese student, speaking of the kind of worker 
needed for China, said : "You see we Chinese are not won to 
Christianity by the philosophy of religion, but by the evidence 
of religion." It was this same truth, only put more explicitly, 
that another Chinese addressed to a missionary physician : 
''You come out here and preach Christianity and hold up 
your motto, 'Salvation for all men.' You run up your Red 
Cross flag over your hospital, and forget all personal danger 
or fatigue as you vitalize this motto, and actually before our 
eyes save men. It grips our hearts, especially when we are 
the ones saved. And I tell you," he went on, "you are going 
to win this city. You are going to win China." 

This practical incarnation of Christ's spirit is appreciated 
not only in Japan and China. A soldier said to a manifestly 
professional "religious worker," "We don't need you now. 
That woman is putting Jesus into our coffee." And a Muham- 
madan soldier in France, after having thoughtfully noticed the 
way the Christian forces were following the armies, finally 
exclaimed: "Where has Buddha been? Where is Muham- 
mad? We know where Jesus is; he is by our side." 

All this means one thing. The world Christian must stand 
for a man who not only knows his message about a Life, but 
is himself embodying that Life. He will seize hold on love 
until it lives in him and can, therefore, he caught by others. 
There is no mightier, more significant force for character 
transformation than Christ-like personality. The impress and 

121 



[VI-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

refiection of the love of God on human character is the best 
apologetic. The most fundamental missionary method, there- 
fore, is the introduction of the kind of life that is desired. 
"Your talk is fair and good," said old Red Jacket, the Indian 
Chief, to those who wanted to preach to his tribe. ''But I 
propose this. Go try your hand in the town of Buffalo for 
one year. They need missionaries, if you can do what you 
say. If in that time you have done them any good and made 
them any better, then we will let you come among our people." 
We may well shrink before the obligation and pause before 
the high responsibility that is placed upon us. But we are 
driven, through failure in other ways, to see that there is no 
shorter cut than actual .embodiment to the effective stimulation 
of the God-life in another. Response comes most readily to 
the manifested ideal. 

Ill 

Of all the activities of the Church, foreign missions exhibits 
this aspect of the world Christian in its purest form. The 
principle of forth-going love has nowhere found more charac- 
teristic embodiment than in this outreaching service of the 
Church. Her ambassadors are paid not on the basis of their 
market value, nor even of salary, but on the basis of a living 
wage, so much so that in most missions the living allowance 
is of necessity adjusted to increase or decrease of family, to 
sickness, or even to study on furlough. Unquestioned com- 
pensations come to the missionary in his life and work, but 
these are not what draw him on, and he goes forth ready 
for far greater sacrifices than usually come to him. There is 
no unwholesome courting of self-abnegation, but if the spirit 
of forth-going service must be at the cost of self, that price 
is unquestioningly paid. Family, country, friends, are left 
behind ; later, and hardest of all, parent and child or husband 
and wife live for years with a world between them, that love's 
expression to men and women of other races and other faiths 
may be perfected. 

In still other ways this enterprise, more than ever before, 
is requiring for its best success a real kenosis — a real emptying 
of one's self, the becoming a servant in very fact as did Christ 
himself. For many, it was easier to love in those old days 
when assumptions of racial and intellectual superiority enabled 
them to think of the peoples of mission lands as inferior be- 

122 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-c] 

ings. They find that love is not so easy when the unruly 
phenomena of adolescence appear — and in many a mission 
station growing self-assertion, initiative, and resentment of 
patronage on the part of the people make large demands on 
patience. Greater still is the demand on love when daughter 
churches seek their independence, and when foreign leadership 
is no longer taken for granted as the natural and obvious 
thing. Harder for many a man of conscious resource and 
power than leaving native country, is the willingness to de- 
crease that those to whom, he ministers may increase. And 
yet even at this most difficult point of love, modern missions 
are embodying the mind of Christ. 

But the missionary is most God-like when, conscious of the 
pricelessness of life about him, he cries out: 

"Only like souls I see the folk thereunder 
Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings," 

and follows this vision of man's supreme need with the long- 
ing which a poet has put into the mouth- of Paul : 

"Then with a rush the intoleiable craving 

Shivers throughout me like a trumpet-call, — 
Oh to save these ! to perish for their saving. 
Die for their life, be offered for them all !'* 

—Frederick W. H. Myers, "St. Paul." 

The present-day manifestation of the God-life in non-Chris- 
tian lands does not, however, stop with the missionaries them- 
selves. For, indeed, their very purpose in going is that this 
kind of life may find rootage where they go. One of the most 
inspiring impressions of a world trip is to find place after 
place where the Christian God is getting a foothold in the 
lives of the people. From such people a church is being raised 
up that will know that it is better to give than to receive, 
and that the very meaning of the Christian life involves serv- 
ice. In just so far as the spirit of helpfulness is found in 
the rising churches abroad will our work there be adjudged 
successful. For the church that we are trying to establish 
abroad is the kind of a church we ought to have here — a 
church which, itself being a servant of the people, is there- 
fore fitted to train up leaders in personal and community and 
national helpfulness. Some day when we better understand 

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[VI-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the mind and character of God as revealed in Christ, we shall 
have a church that reveals in the whole life of its members 
the spirit of him who came not to be ministered unto but to 
minister. When the Church around the world in openmincjed 
sincerity seeks to be the servant of life, men will demand from 
her no other token of authority. 

IV 

That we should cooperate in manifesting the God-life has 
been seen clearly, but narrowly, in connection with giving 
the Gospel to other lands. As a result the very word "mis- 
sionary" usually suggests China or India or Africa — some- 
thing far away. But that business man was not missionary- 
minded who overlooked his Christian duty to his own em- 
ployees even though he inserted a leaflet on foreign missions 
in every business letter he sent forth. To be interested pri- 
marily in what is far away may be easier and more romantic 
than to grapple with facts at one's doors. 

Foreign missions, however, are simply the expression toward 
certain distant people of the distinctively Christian attitude 
toward all need. The missionary attitude toward the Chinese 
is simply the Christian attitude toward life expressed in the 
locality of China. The missionary consciousness is not a 
matter of geography. Whether it is a row of lepers beside 
the Ganges or an Italian community across our railway 
tracks ; whether it is the famine orphans of India or the 
undernourished children of our crowded city blocks ; whether 
it is factory conditions in Japan or munition workers in our 
neighboring home town, the disposition to go out in loving 
service is a manifestation of the same spirit. 

What we need to do is to universalize this attitude of help- 
ful and brotherly living. It must be brought into the family, 
the community, the nation. Where organization is necessary, 
we must effect it so that every needed means may be provided 
for practicing the social faith we have. There must not be 
merely a group within the Church with the missionary con- 
sciousness ; the Church itself must be pervaded with the 
character of God, expressing itself in a thousand little, as well 
as larger, ways. The Church must' be thought of not so much 
as a place where men gather together to become saved as 
where they go to get dynamic to save others, where rest is 
obtained that work may follow. 

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ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-c] 

The conviction of the innermost nature of God as pursuant 
love and of the inevitable consequence that if we are ever to 
be fully saved we must in this respect be like him, should 
color all the acts and personal relations of daily life. Through 
habit, through prayer, through ever-renewed fellowship with 
him, it should become the natural expression of a transformed 
Hfe. 

Have you not seen the people at the end of a railway 
carriage touched and inwardly cleansed by some little act or 
look of simple kindness that had this God-mark on it? Have 
you not gone av/ay from some crowded bargain counter feel- 
ing that it was easier to believe in God because someone did 
just the right thing for the tired mother with a baby in her 
arms, or spoke with sympathetic insight to the overworked 
saleswoman? Insignificant things? Never! It is in the petty 
round of daily tasks that we may most surely gain that 
mastery of the God-like that will enable us to apply this dis- 
position with insight to larger things. 

It immensely diminishes the effectiveness of any witness to 
love and power in non-Christian lands when the countries 
which send forth their Christian witness are filled with social, 
industrial, and racial conditions which belie the Gospel's 
power. Non-Christian nations often see more plainly than we 
do the glass houses in which we live. To their capitals the 
world news is wired each day and circulated in a hundred 
papers, revealing to them that the dynamic and spirit which 
has been manifested in foreign missions has not grappled 
with lynchings, industrial relations, and immigration diffi- 
culties in our own land. In the case of government students 
who have come from China to America, and who had been 
but little under the influence of Christianity in China, the 
transition to this land creates a good effect. But in a group 
of eight students who had been brought up in mission schools 
in China and had later studied in the United States, not one- 
was willing to say that his estimate of Christianity had been: 
improved by his stay in America. It is startling to have a 
leader among foreign students say that he could name forty 
Chmese Christians who had renounced Christianity while in. 
America. It is still more humiliating to have it authorita- 
tively stated that among the many Oriental students in 
America more renounce Christianity on seeing conditions here 
than are led through residence here to accept Christianity. 

125 



[VI-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

The Church today must make earnest with many duties, 
but certainly none more vital than to arouse its constituency 
to the obligation to embody the fruits of the Spirit. For the 
Church is not meeting its obligations by placing a halo about 
certain men and women called missionaries and sending them 
out into the world. Not until everybody, individually as well 
as corporately, is reaching forth in redemptive, constructive 
service in cooperation with the pursuant love of God will the 
Church have attained this aspect of its goal. And it is only 
out from a church that is embodying this attitude in all its 
human relationships that the passion and conviction will 
come that can evangelize a world. 



Nations also must cooperate in manifesting the God-life. 
The larger social order will not be Christianized until each 
member of the family of nations, like their common Father, 
finds its essential reality in purpose — purpose that is God-like 
in its will to serve, asking nothing in return. The world is 
hungry for the avowal by the stronger nations that they 
have disinterested obligations toward their weaker sisters. 
The removal of barriers between nations must be accompanied 
by the creation of positive conditions of friendship. The 
more backward races are waiting for the distinctive charac- 
teristic of the Christian God to be manifested in the races 
more advanced. And signs are not wanting that this aspect 
of the missionary consciousness is making progress amongst 
the nations. 

One of the finest examples on a national scale of the em- 
bodiment of the Christian motive was America's unselfish 
entrance into the World War with the purpose, at whatever 
necessary cost of blood or treasure, to make democracy avail- 
able to every people who desire it, and to ensure to the 
smallest nation the opportunity for self-realization and free 
development. "We have no selfish ends to serve," wrote 
President Wilson. "We desire no conquest, no dominion. 
We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensa- 
tion for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one 
of the champions of the rights of mankind." 

This action of America was in reality a magnificent expres- 
sion of the missionary spirit, and yet so conventional has our 
religious thinking become that many never thought of 

126 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-c] 

America's action as having religious quality or as involving 
religious values. When we begin more thoroughly to incar- 
nate our Gospel, and to relate it to the actual problems that 
press for solution in every realm of life, such a national 
commitment will be seen to have been a religious act. 

America's relation to the Philippjnes has embodied Chris- 
tian principles. Ex-President Roosevelt could say : "I believe 
that I am speaking with historic accuracy and impartiality 
when I say that the American treatment of and attitude 
toward the Philippine people, in its combination of disinter- 
ested ethical purpose and sound common sense, marks a new 
and long stride forward in advance of all steps that have 
hitherto been taken along the path of wise and proper treat- 
ment of weaker by stronger races." It was this spirit that 
sent over to those long-suffering islanders five hundred teach- 
ers to begin the establishment of an agency which, next to 
religion, has proved to be the choicest gift we had for them. 
Individuals and groups and private corporations may have 
fallen short of the nation's high ideal, and through their 
selfish exploitation marred the clearness of the national mis- 
sionary spirit, but the American people as a whole have never 
wished the unexpected relationship with these islands to be 
other than an unselfish service for humanity. 

It is because the Christian spirit is so seldom embodied 
nationally that the chancelleries of Europe scoffed at the 
very thought of Cuba's ever becoming independent after the 
United States had once laid her hands upon it. They thought 
the insincerity of America's pretence at giving independence 
was being brought to light each time she interfered with 
turbulent factions in the population, even though at con- 
siderable cost to herself. And yet today Cuba is politically 
free. 

It was this spirit that led the United States to give back to 
China the Boxer indemnity, part of which the Chinese happily 
invested in endowments for an annual stream of Chinese 
students to America. The same spirit breathes in modern 
Britain as it thinks out toward China and toward India. Dur- 
ing the recent fateful years we have been seeing the birth- 
pangs of a still m.ore universal and conscious recognition of 
the will to serve in international policy. 

On the other hand, it is not this spirit that is placarding 
China with cigarette advertisements, and giving out free 

127 



[VI-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

samples by the thousand to child and man alike in an effort 
to cause China to substitute the cigarette habit for opium. It 
is not this spirit that encourages the morphine trade with 
China, or allows increased prohibition at home to be balanced 
by increased exportation of liquor to backward peoples. It 
is not this spirit that inspires the merciless exploitation of 
the weaker amongst earth's peoples. National God-likeness 
would involve sharing the best, and acting the brother, and 
winning loving friendship through constructive good will. Is 
it not strange that war is practically the only way, at present, 
by which one nation can spend money to help another? Na- 
tional cooperation in the manifestation of the God-life will 
make it not only legally possible, but natural, for a nation to 
use money in befriending another nation. It would involve 
enacting legislation that would enable us to keep our promises 
to protect aliens ; it would seek, even at heavy cost, to dispel 
Mexican suspicion, and to win a larger measure of confidence 
from the twenty sister-republics to the south of us. It would 
inspire all colony-holding powers to secure the development 
in human well-being of their subjects and the availability for 
the service of mankind of the potentialities of an undeveloped 
region. 

We note, however, that Christ's dictum, if any man would 
be first let him be the servant of all, is increasingly being used 
to test a nation's greatness. Men are asking, with Frederick 
Lynch, whether that nation is not greatest ''which can forget 
its self-interest occasionally and go out ; which can be the 
friend and helper of weaker nations ; which can demand that 
justice be done in the world; which can have the sense of 
mission, of being sent to seek, not its own only, but to bless 
others ; which can learn that it is giving which makes a nation 
great, as it is giving and serving which makes men noble."' 

As we take a long look over the past we can see spiritual 
advance in international practice and ideals. At one time the 
fate of the weaker races was extermination or slavery. Later 
their fate was alleviated to that of becoming a tributary 
people. Still later the conquering people merely subjected 
them to industrial and commercial exploitation. But we are 
catching glimpses of a more Christian stage, where the 
weaker people is the object of self-sacrificing service given 



2 •• What Makes a Nation Great," p. 8i. 

128 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-c] 

in the spirit of friendship. Into the development of this new 
spirit of internationalism all the driving power of Christianity 
should be put. What is most characteristic of God must be 
made characteristic of the nations. If individual salvation 
means nothing unless it issues in service and sacrifice, this 
same principle must hold for nations also. National salvation 
involves of necessity international service and sacrifice for 
the world. Nations no less than individuals are saved to 
serve. Mutuality of service will be the evidence that Christ 
has come to the larger group. 

Those who are working for a super-national organization 
realize that some kind of an embodiment of the God-relation 
is needed in the realm of peoples. The establishment of a 
league of nations that will have as its object not simply the 
negative one of preventing war, but the positive one of over- 
seeing, obviating, or adjusting clashes of interest through 
organization, will be one of the conditions which will make 
Christian international morality possible. We feel we have 
a right to expect individuals to be moral because the social 
organization in which the individual is placed makes moral 
expression possible. The modes of associated life in which 
the individual finds himself confer powers and impose re- 
•sponsibilities upon him. 

Now if there were a social organization for nations, that 
defined and established their rights and duties, they would 
the more easily develop a consciousness of the moral standard 
for nations. We need God to become flesh and dwell among 
us in the form of an international organization, not simply 
that certain known moral obligations may be effectively en- 
forced, but that new moral obligations and regulations may 
come into existence. The world Christian will not simply 
ask that the highest individual morality should be adopted by 
nations but will work to establish that form of organization 
which will be the first big step toward making the ideal 
possible. 

We do not mean by this to glorify mere organization. For 
diplomacy and balance of power, treaties and alliances, arma- 
ments and preparation, financial solidarity and the community 
of labor — all these devices have failed. Count Okuma knew 
that these, alone, were not the solution when, in substance, 
he said to his countrymen incensed over California's anti- 
Japanese legislation : ''This problem can't be settled by diplo- 

129 



[VI-c] MARKS QF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

macy, by anti-American legislation, by war, or even by threats 
of war. The only possible solution is by an appeal to Ameri- 
can Christians to apply to these problems the principles of 
their Christian faith — the brotherhood of man." It is not 
organization as such, but organization that is breathed through 
with Christian principle and Christian spirit that is needed. 

This embodiment of Christian attitude in international rela- 
tionships is increasingly necessary if non-Christian peoples 
are to be drawn to the way of Christ. They are no longer 
dependent on the mere testimony of missionaries as to what 
Christianity is ; the practice of the West is now an open book 
that all may read. In so far as we shape our national policies 
so as to embody the spirit of Christ in our relations with the 
non-Christian peoples shall we make effective the faithful 
preaching of the Word. The spirit of Christ has been glar- 
ingly flouted at times by the nations ; let the Church not 
rest until his spirit is so markedly embodied in national ex- 
pression that the remotest parts of Asia and of Africa shall 
hear a great "good news." The honor of Christ in many 
lands is depending on the sincerity and the vigor of the protest 
which forces called by his name shall make to unchristian 
factors in social and national life. The greatest opportunity 
thus far in all history for the incarnation of the Christ came 
at the close of the Great War. Are Christian forces travailing 
with yearning love for the continuous increase of this new 
revelation of God? 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Discuss the truth of such statements as the following: 
"It is because you Christians are not like your Christ that 
your religion does not advance more" ; "the Muhammadans 
are not converted because we are not converted." What 
analogies to these statements may be found in the Scriptures? 

2. Is Christianity a theory or a practice? Or is it both? 
If so, which is more needed today, better preaching, or better 
practice? For what reason? 

3. What would you say it means to be a Christian? 

4. Show (a) from the prophets and (b) from the teach- 
ings of Jesus that religion is not a mysterious something that 
one is to "get," or to "have," apart from righteousness. 

5. Where does Jesus teach us that we are to be like him- 

130 



ZEAL FOR MANIFESTATION OF GOD [VI-c] 

self? Like God? In what points, if any, are we taught that 
a lower quality of life is expected of us? 

6. What is involved in being like Jesus? Like God? 

7. Bring out from Christ's words what difference in obliga- 
tion for the recovery of the world belonged to him as com- 
pared to us. 

8. The Moravians over a century ago inserted in their 
instructions to their missionaries the direction that "until the 
Brethren shall be able to express themselves intelligently to 
the heathen, they must be contented with preaching by their 
walk and conversation only." What are some of the ways 
in which you could show what is meant by brotherhood to a 
person who does not understand your tongue? What are 
the results of putting too much dependence on the tongue- 
method ? 

9. Name several important social forces in the order of 
their importance. Where in this list would a discerning 
visitor to our land place the actual embodiment of Chris- 
tianity ? 

10. In what ways may the God-life be incarnated in the 
twentieth century? 

11. Discuss the truth of the following statement: "God only 
works for men in so far as he works through men." 

12. What would be the loss to the Church and to Chris- 
tendom if none of the missionaries of the nineteenth century 
had lived? 



131 



CHAPTER Vn 

Courage for World Purposes 

There have been times when religious leaders had as their 
greatest good the winning of the martyr's crown. Charles 
Spinola, as he led forth to the Martyr's Mount a group of 
over fifty missionaries and Japanese Christians to give up 
their lives for Christ, said : *1 know not to what I can 
attribute my happy lot, except to the goodness of my Saviour, 
who wishes to manifest the riches of his mercy upon his 
unworthy servant." During the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries there was an "Association of Martyrs," the purpose 
of which was "to strengthen those who were hourly exposed 
to a cruel death, by teaching them to consider martyrdom as 
the highest earthly joy." Under such influence there was little 
solicitude over what, to most, would seem to be an uncalled- 
for waste of life. 

Such days of forlorn hopes and hairbreadth escapes and 
dramatic martyrdoms have largely passed. And with them 
has passed the longing for their particular ideal. It is not 
enough for a life to be harmless, or even to yield itself in 
martyrdom ; it must be effectual. To see the truth is not 
enough ; that truth must be made prevalent. It does not 
satisfy to know the cause of social wrong; those causes must 
be removed. Service must be delivered, and increased happi- 
ness in others actually brought about. One mark of a world 
Christian is, therefore, the passion of a great purpose, the 
belief that God is glorified in the hearing of much fruit and 
the ardent desire to make one's life count for the very utmost 
in world-reconstruction. It is the belief, not only that there 
are great tasks to be accomplished, but that one must join 
with God in completing them. Let us see if we cannot enter 
the fellowship of those who have had great world aims. 

Seventh Week, First Day: The Master in World 
Purpose 

I came that they may have life, and may have it abun- 
dantly. — John id: id. 

132 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-2] 

Only as we ourselves grow can we see the greatness of the 
life purpose in this verse. As wide as the world, as deep as 
human nature, as limitless as the unfathomed resources of 
God is the abundant life Je^us came to bring. And when 
we pause to think over the content he put into this life pur- 
pose, we cannot but kneel in reverence. • ''Never has a human 
will been set on ends so lofty and sublime. What object of 
human endeavor can be compared with the purpose of Christ 
to redeem human life from the evils that assail and corrupt 
it, to establish a kingdom resting, not on force, but on the 
free service of converted wills, to bring it to pass that the 
will of God should be done on earth as it is done in heaven, 
to destroy the unbelief in men's hearts and make them the 
children of the Father in heaven? As the explorer goes out 
to discover new lands, as the adventurer sets forth to find or 
build a kingdom, Christ calls his followers to explore the 
undiscovered treasures of the spiritual world, and to labor 
for a kingdom of everlasting splendor, a kingdom of truth 
and righteousness and love, v/hose builder and maker is God."^ 

Let us who profess to follow him not think that discipleship 
is summed up merely in correct belief with reference to his 
person or his mission — centering, that is, on something intel- 
lectual. Following Jesus means taking up his program and 
expanding our narrow grasp of heart and will until we have 
committed our lives to his great world-transforming purpose. 
Shall we not learn from him? 

Seventh Week, Second Day: Living Up to Christ's 
Ideal for Us 

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, 
the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works 
than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father. — 
John 14: 12. 

Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; 
and so shall ye be my disciples. — John 15:8. 

Not only did Jesus have a great world-purpose, but his 
aspiration was that the lives of his followers should eventuate 
in results of eternal value. Are they doing it? Let us turn 
to one of the most characteristic expressions of the Church 
for answer. 

1 J. H. Oldham, in " The Missionary Motive," edited by W. Paton, p. 32. 

133 



[VlI-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Speaking of the organized efforts of the Church in modern 
times to express the highest type of Christian world friend- 
ship, one of our most popular speakers to students said, 
■'Foreign missions are the most effective movement in human 
history." A professor in the University of Chicago speaks 
of them as ''the most significant and serious of all twentieth 
century enterprises." The editor of the British quarterly. 
The East and the West, writes : "The task on which missions 
are engaged, whether viev/ed from a spiritual, a moral, or an 
educational standpoint, is the greatest which men have essayed 
to undertake." The senior secretary amongst our American 
foreign missionary boards speaks of this enterprise as "the 
most profound and difficult problem that is moving over the 
face of the earth." A much-valued British author holds that 
"the missionary enterprise is no longer a romance, it has be- 
come a great epic — the greatest the world has yet produced." 

Those who take the trouble to become informed see this 
movement promoting democracy, spreading liberty, diffusing 
education, elevating womanhood, glorifying childhood, healing 
sickness, improving living conditions, recreating communities, 
destroying social abuses, overcoming moral abominations, and 
proving everywhere the power of God unto salvation to every 
man and nation that believeth. And incidentally, one may 
note that an impartial witness like Dr. Simon Flexner, who 
made investigations for the China Medical Board of the 
Rockefeller Foundation, can state that "there is no organiza- 
tion in the world, either philanthropic or business, which is 
getting as large returns out of the money it spends as the 
various boards of foreign missions." 

Evidently there are Christians who have dared to work 
for world results. In nation after nation one may see the 
silent march of an unseen Power. But this is because world 
Christians have made great ventures. In these days, when 
one of the most powerful convictions operating among men 
is the belief that the world can be made better, shall we not 
suffuse our minds with the largeness of Christ's expectation 
for us? 

Seventh Week, Third Day: Making Known the 
Love of Christ 

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from 
whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that 

134 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-4I 

he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, 
that ye may be strengthened with power through his Spirit 
in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts 
through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and 
grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend v/ith all 
the saints what is the breadth and length and height and 
depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth 
knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of 
God. — Eph. 3:14-19. 

That men should know the love of Christ, and hence be 
filled with all the fulness of God — this was the great ideal 
for men for which Paul prayed and worked. To a great 
extent the young men and women even of our own country 
are not only out of touch with Christianity, but do not know 
what Christianity is. Or else they think they can grasp its 
significance without serious study, and can comprehend its 
full meaning in a shallow understanding of love to God and 
to fellowmen. Read over these verses and realize the im- 
mensity of the work that God must do in the hearts of men 
before this prayer for the youth of our own and other nations 
can be answered. 

From some standpoints it would seem a simple matter to 
tell about Jesus to those who know him not. A missionary in 
India actually spent his time in going on horseback through 
the villages proclaiming his good news. But no Paul Revere's 
ride through the universe will serve the purpose ; no mega- 
phone, however powerful, will accomplish this high end. Far 
too much is involved in making the message understood. 
Sometimes it seems almost impossible to deliver a direct and 
simple message that will find its way home. But now let 
us read these verses over and over again, making them and 
the realities for which they stand so vital in our lives that 
the great attempt with God's help to make them true in 
others' lives will be the inevitable outcome of rich experience 
and deep gratitude. 

Seventh Week, Fourth Day: A Task of Unrivalled 
Potentiality 

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were 
called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, 
one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, 
and through all, and in all. . . . For the perfecting of the 

135 



[VII-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building 
up of the body of Christ: till we all attain unto the unity 
of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto 
a fullgrown man, unto the measure of the stature of the 
fulness of Christ. . . . From whom all the body fitly 
framed and knit together through that which every joint 
supplieth, according to the working in due measure of 
each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto 
the building up of itself in love. . . . Wherefore, putting 
away falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neigh- 
iDor: for we are members one of another. — Eph. 4:4-6, 
12, 13, 16, 25. 

So far do many of our churches come from the ideal of 
these verses, that many people are restless with the Church 
as an institution, and question whether it should figure in 
a real world program. We remember, however, the place 
it held in the program of the greatest world Christian after 
Jesus. In a little more than ten years Paul had established 
churches in four provinces of the Roman Empire, selecting 
important centers of Roman administration, Greek civiliza- 
tion, Jewish influence, and large trade. Over a score of 
churches are mentioned in the New Testament — Antioch, Asia, 
Babylon, Cenchrese, Csesarea, Cilicia, Corinth, Ephesus, Ga- 
latia, Galilee, Jerusalem, Joppa, Judsea, Laodicea, Pergamos, 
Philadelphia, Samaria, Sardis, Smyrna, Syria, Thessalonica, 
and Thyatira. Certainly one of the very definite proximate 
.aims of this great worker was the establishment of churches. 

And if you should lay aside the Church as a social institu- 
tion you would have to bring back something else, not unlike 
what the Church can be, in order to realize your vision of the 
Christian social ideal, and to foster that attitude of expectant 
faith without which visions do not come. The Church needs 
constructive criticism, but it has potentialities as an institution 
for human welfare to which we are just awaking. 

It is not strange, then, that world Christians of our own 
day have made one of their most definite of aims, the estab- 
lishment of self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propa- 
gating churches in every land. But note what really gigantic 
problems are involved. Instead of creeds which are merely 
reminiscent of struggles that have been real and valid for the 
West, the thinkers of these churches must formulate on the 
one hand what a Christian ought to believe with reference to 

136 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-5] 

those things which have exercised the earnest religious thought 
of their own lands, such as karma, transmigration, and ances- 
tor worship ; and on the other what a Christian should believe 
with reference to those realms of religious thought which 
their lands have neglected, such as moral renewal and the 
character of God, polygamy, and household slavery. Before 
each of these churches lie the vast problems of an unevangel- 
ized nation, the task of raising up strong native leadership, 
the education of the illiterate, the provision of Christian 
literature, and the working out of a special Christian approach 
to the non-Christian philosophies and systems of their land 
after having assimilated the moral principles of the Gospel 
for all. These churches must find a place in the national and 
social life of their own lands, and learn to apply the social 
teachings of Jesus to their own peculiar problems. Surely in 
helping in an enterprise fraught with so many difficulties 
and dangers, one needs to pray for powers commensurate 
with the task. One would not need to pray for a larger or 
more significant task. 

Seventh Week, Fifth Day: The Length of a Lever 
That Can Remove America's Load 

But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is 
come upon you: and ye shall be my witnesses both in 
Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth. — Acts i : 8. 

In spite of the world outreach of the Christian impulse, 
found both implicitly and explicitly in the New Testament, 
there are those who would have us limit our aim at first to 
Christianizing America. As long as there is so much that 
needs attention in our own land, why enter upon a program 
that looks out "unto the uttermost part of the earth"? 

As a matter of fact, however, the weight right here at home 
is such that a lever that would move it must be long enough 
to reach to China. Only the faith that dares set itself to the 
purification and enrichment of a whole world's life will have 
dynamic enough to deal effectively with the situation at one's 
door. Our own land will not become thoroughly socialized 
without great sacrifice; but no goal less than the ennobling 
and uplifting of all humanity will be big enough to elicit 

137 



[VII-6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the sacrifice and the loyalty demanded even by our own 
needs. 

Moreover, as we saw in Chapter II, there are elements in 
Christianity which must be emphasized and brought to light 
through the reactions of India and China and Japan. Can 
anything less than a Christ who is manifestly meeting the 
needs of every land be adequate even for our own? 

Still further, as we saw in Chapter I, we are so interlinked 
and involved with other peoples in the shrunken world of 
today, that we can not perfect ourselves alone. The social 
order in America will never be Christian through and through, 
if Africa and South America and the Near East lag far 
behind. 

But most of these considerations, which we have just been 
mentioning in favor of the adoption of a great world program, 
have a selfish tinge about them, when surely God's plan has 
unselfishness at the heart of it. As we saw in Chapter VI, the 
group that sets before itself the end of self-salvation first 
has missed the very conception of what salvation is, and will 
possess no inward vitality that will cause it to prevail. Only 
a forth-going people can have infilling fellowship with a 
God who loves. 

Seventh Week, Sixth Day: Empowered for a Task 

And v^hen the multitude saw what Paul had done, they 
Hfted up their voice, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, 
The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. 
And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercury, 
because he was the chief speaker. And the priest of 
Jupiter whose temple was before the city, brought oxen 
and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacri- 
fice with the multitudes. But when the apostles, Barnabas 
and Paul, heard of it, they rent their garments, and sprang 
forth among the multitude, crying out and saying. Sirs, 
why do ye these things? We also are men of like pas- 
sions with you, and bring you good tidings, that ye should 
turn from these vain things unto a living God, who made 
the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them 
is.— ^Acts 14: 11-15. 

We must not reject a world citizen's purpose and obliga- 
tion because they seem too great for us. Paul and Barnabas 
refused to be considered as greater in themselves than other 

138 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-7] 

men. In like manner Peter answered the men who were 
astonished at an exceptionally wonderful evidence of power 
in himself and John : ''Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at 
this man? or why fasten ye your eyes on us, as though by 
our own power or godliness we had made him to walk?'* 
(Acts 3:12). These great leaders of the early Church did 
not attempt to undertake to Christianize the Mediterranean 
world in their own strength ; they knew how to continue in 
touch with resources that empowered them above their natural 
selves. 

And so today we must guard against placing missionaries 
on pedestals as superior beings, lifted above the tests and 
criticism to which other mortals must be subjected. They 
have a big purpose, and are drawing heavily on God's suffi- 
ciency, but only as you and I can do. A trip of ten thousand 
miles across the seas does not in itself exempt them from 
human frailties. The Source of their faith and hope and 
fruitage is as open to you as to them. God is calling you 
to partnership in a great task. Are you willing to be em- 
powered, as were Paul and Barnabas, Peter and John? 

Seventh Week, Seventh Day : The Great Handbook 
for World Tasks 

Let the peoples praise thee, O God; 
Let all the peoples praise thee. 
O let the nations be glad and sing for joy; 
For thou wilt judge the peoples with equity, 
And govern the nations upon earth. 
Let the peoples praise thee, O God; 
Let all the peoples praise thee. 
The earth hath yielded its increase: 
God, even our own God, will bless us. 
God will bless us; 

And all the ends of the earth shall fear him. — Psalm 
67:3-7. 

The book which contains the greatest stimulus to world 
outreach is the Bible. In the Old Testament there are to 
be found magnificent sweeps of world-embracing thought, 
such as the unity and power of God in the first chapter of 
Genesis ; the revelation of the universal purpose of God 
(Gen. 9: 15; 12: 1-3; 28: 13, 14; 49: 10) ; the glorious exalta- 
tion of Jehovah as reigning in righteousness to the ends of 

139 



[VII-7] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

the earth (Psalm 33^5-15; 72:8-20; 96; 98; 117); and the 
internationalism of prophecy (Isa. 11:1-10; 40:1-8; 42:1-7; 
45:1-8; 49:1-7; 55:1-5; Jer. 31:31-34; Joel 2:28; Micah 
4:1-3; Hab. 2:14; Zech. 9:10). We may see in Ruth a 
marked example of a non-Israelite being admitted through 
fitness of character to the circle of the elect; or in Jonah, a 
call to foreign evangelism as against narrow exclusiveness. 

But our greatest inspiration for world interest from the 
Old Testament comes from taking a large historical view 
of the trend of Israel's whole development. We can see the 
way in which God trained a people, racially and religiously 
the most persistently exclusive that the world has ever known, 
until their most prophetic spirits triumphed over national 
provincialism and selfishness. An exclusive cult became the 
channel through which a religion meant for all the world was 
developed, preserved, and distributed. No one interested in 
a Christian world view can afford to neglect the grand sweep 
of Israel's history. 

Similarly the missionary character of the New Testament 
does not reside in a few quotable texts such as John three, 
sixteen and seventeen, or the Great Commission. It pervades 
its very fabric. In the gospels we find the clearest statement 
of the principles of the Kingdom, the ideals of universal 
brotherhood and world-wide service, and the greatest per- 
manent source for getting back to the great Giver of the 
world's good news. 

Most of the New Testament was written by men who were 
engaged in the same work as missionaries of the present day. 
They, too, were grappling with the chains of custom, preju- 
dice, and unbelief which bound their converts under the sway 
of an immemorial past. Instead of "Acts of the Apostles" we 
might read ''Deeds of Missionary Saints," or ''Some Deeds 
of Those Who Were Set Apart and Sent Forth." Of all 
the books of the Bible this is the most unfinished, with glorious 
chapters being added every year. Since the word "mission- 
ary" is the Latin equivalent for the Greek "apostle," both 
words meaning "one who is sent," it is interesting to make 
the substitution in such passages as Luke 6:13; 22:14; I 
Cor. 15: 9; II Pet. ^:2. 

The writings of Paul are the letters of a missionary: Ro- 
mans, a message to Christians at the heart of the Empire 
from the heart of a missionary who longed to visit them; 

140 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-c] 

Corinthians, the Gospel for converts left without instruction 
in a heathen port ; Galatians, a letter to country districts about 
to be Judaized ; Ephesians, an epistle from an imprisoned 
missionary to Christians in a heathen cathedral city ; Philip- 
pians, a letter to a typical Roman colony where resided the 
missionary's first converts in Europe ; and the pastoral epistles, 
instructions to missionary lieutenants. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

"Christianity is a religion that expects you to do things." 
So runs a Japanese saying. And while we know what a high 
call comes to us to be, yet we recognize the validity of Carey's 
famous summons : "Expect great things of God, attempt great 
things for God." We have been looking at some of the great 
tasks of a Christian ; let us see in what other ways the 
Christian must have a high aim for life investment. 



The progressive development of Christian, personality is- 
one of the greatest ventures that enlist the faith of a world 
Christian. He will want to cooperate in the great adventure 
of peopling the world with men and women who have re- 
leased God's image, and who may therefore be trusted with 
moral creativity. 

At the furthest extreme from this attainment are the 
women of many of the tribes of Africa. They have been mere 
property so long, so used to being ordered, so little used ta 
initiative of their own, that the expression "creative per- 
sonality" hardly seems applicable to them at all. Not many 
decades ago Christian leaders in more than one non-Christian 
land who were inaugurating women's education had to hear 
the taunt: "They will want to educate our cows next." Pro-^ 
fessor Nitobe, President of the new Union Christian College 
for Women at Tokyo, has said for Japan: "Probably most 
men would admit that there is such a thing as personality, but 
they would also assert that it is entirely masculine. Women, 
they would say, have none. Their place in our economy has 
been entirely derivative. Christianity cuts directly across this 
idea, laying stress upon individual responsibility and freedom. 
Christianity has given us a new valuation of women." 

141 



[Vll-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Now what Professor Nitobe says is true. For, a careful 
comparison of the social results of the various religions shows 
that at no point is there greater contrast hetzveen Christian 
■and non-Christian systems than in the treatment of woman, 
and in the development of her personality. One would will- 
ingly stake judgment as to the power of Christianity on this 
one point alone. It will be found that in Christendom there 
has been a tendency toward a continuously progressive de- 
velopment of the individuality of women. The introduction 
of love rather than property as the basis for marriage, mo- 
nogamy in the place of polygamy and concubinage, abandon- 
ment of arbitrary divorce, ideals of domestic purity, woman's 
increased sharing in the rights and privileges of domestic, 
social, and political life — these are movements that have been 
fostered by the fundamental principles of Jesus. Since so 
great a change is wrought through contact with Jesus Christ, 
it is not strange that great souls have had the high ambition 
to improve the status of the world's womanhood by bringing 
non-Christian peoples in contact with him and with his 
principles and valuation of life. 

Suppose you were passing along a road in Turkey and saw 
by the wayside a girl making a sound as of some animal. 
And suppose on going nearer she began to curse and spit upon 
you, would you have faith to attempt her reformation? It 
was a world Christian in the shape of a medical missionary 
who passed just such a girl. The people of the neighboring 
towns had told him that if ever a devil was in a person, this 
girl was demon-possessed. But his heart was touched. 
Amidst her curses he caught her in his arms and by sheer 
main force carried her along as she bit at him. She was taken 
to a mission girls' school. The story of what happened dur- 
ing the next six years is one full of patient, Christ-like love 
for this girl on the part of the Christian staff. At the end 
she was graduated along with others, and the subject of her 
final essay was 'The Love of God." After completing her 
education she said : 'T want to go to some hard place — a place 
to which another will not go." In this spirit she was sent 
to a very needy village. After a year a petition, signed by 
all the prominent men of that village, came asking for more 
workers. ''She has been an angel of light. She has trans- 
formed this village. Send some one to teach the men as she 
has been teaching the women." 

I4J2 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-c] 

Glance at any land in which Christ has had a chance, and 
you will find women released and ever more and more free. 
In Japan, for example, you will find a good example of Chris- 
tian personality in Madame Hiroaka, one of the richest 
women in Japan, and daughter of the distinguished Mitsui 
family. In Japan's recent evangelistic campaign she went 
from one end of the Empire to the other, speaking about 
Christ in every large town, in -hall and theater. Surely here 
is no lack of personality. 

Is it any wonder that very touching gratitude is expressed 
by those who have been thus helped by Christ? The mother 
of Mr. Yamanouchi, one of the oldest evangelists in Japan, 
every night of her life after her conversion, slept with her 
face toward America. "For in the West is America, and from 
America came my great light." 

II 

But the attempt to develop Christian personality has not 
stopped with women. For the whole social system in many 
lands has overemphasized the corporate spirit so that indi- 
viduality has been under-developed. The East has thought 
in terms of the group. For example, in India caste has not 
permitted individualism to come to its own, so that the tend- 
ency is for people to act in masses. The communal spirit 
makes the caste so dominant that members of the caste can 
hardly be persuaded to act on their own initiative or convic- 
tions independently of their neighbors. In matters of con- 
version they wait until a strong party or a whole village can 
come over to Christianity. This lack of developed indi- 
viduality is taken into consideration by Christian workers, for 
they recognize that they must either see that the whole com- 
munity of the convert comes over with him, or else take 
special pains that the new convert shall soon be incorporated 
into the new community. It is a psychological necessity that 
the convert should be conscious of a group environment. 

Similarly in Africa, morality is the morality of the tribe, 
the sept, or the clan. The individual, as such, has hardly 
awakened to consciousness. The average custom of the 
group is the law for the individual. For the Burman hillmen, 
the South American Indians, many of the castes of India, as 
well as for the tribes of Africa, loyalty to custom and the 

143 



[VII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

desire to follow the ways of their fathers are the virtues of 
cardinal importance. Individual dissatisfaction with old be- 
liefs or customs hardly has a chance to show itself. This 
feeling of solidarity with one's group makes it almost im- 
possible for the individual to choose for himself when a 
new religion is presented. For him, religion is an affair of 
the tribe. Hence it seems almost a miracle when the first 
few influential ones do step out and become Christians. When 
once the movement has been started, however, the very feeling 
of oneness leads others to follow. Amongst them are those 
who frankly acknowledge that they have become Christian 
because their neighbors took the step, or "because they wanted 
to follow the elders." 

There have always been those who have laughed to scorn 
the high faith that each human being has a personality to be 
developed — is, in fact, a potential son of God. Sometimes it 
is gross self-interest, sometimes lack of vision, sometimes the 
ingrained teaching of religion, that lies back of this practical 
denial of souls to men. All of these reasons were doubtless 
operative in that Hindu landlord who, as he beat the Chris- 
tian teacher and drove him from the pariah converts, cried 
out : "And if ever you come into my village again and open 
a school for these Christians, I will kill you! Can pigs learn? 
Can dogs read? You get out and stay out." But the same 
attitude was found in that Christian Boer who sneered at 
Robert Moft'at. When Moffat, stopping at a comfortable home 
in South Africa, wanted the Hottentot slaves called in to 
evening prayers, the farmer scornfully said: "Hottentots! Do 
you mean that, then? Let me go to the mountains and call 
the baboons, if you want a congregation of that sort. Or 
stop, I have it; my sons, call the dogs, that lie in front of 
the door ; they will do." 

But one does not need to go to the Hindus of India, or to 
the subjectors of the Negro race, to find lack of faith in the 
project of the development of sincere Christian personalities. 
"Rice Christians" may be secured, of course. All are willing 
to acknowledge this. But how, say all too many, can there 
be more than a certain change of external forms, and the 
adoption of certain pious words and phrases, in connection 
with religion which is a matter of centuries of tradition? 

Let such doubters watch a certain line of Chinese students. 
The Boxers have surrounded the school, and closed all but 

144 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-c] 

a single gate. A cross is placed in front of this single outlet, 
and word is sent that any who trample upon the cross may 
go unhurt, but that whoever steps around the cross shall be 
killed at once. The line starts out the gate. The first seven 
trample upon the cross, and go absolutely free. The next, 
a girl, kneels before the cross ; and then, rising, passes to one 
side to be shot down by the persecutors. Not another in that 
long line of a hundred students falters, but each passes to one 
side and is killed. When 30,000 Chinese could face death in 
1900 rather than deny their Master, when the Christians of 
Uganda could brave the fires of a thousand martyrdoms, when 
results are attested by life and the giving of life, the expecta- 
tion of great things from God is justified. 

Ill 

The world Christian will attempt great things in the Chris- 
tiani/zation of the social order. This is the reason why the 
China Continuation Committee, representing all the Protestant 
missions in China, has an official sub-committee on "Social 
Service." This is why you find a ''Social Welfare Committee" 
reporting to the Federated Missions of Japan. This is why 
the Y. M. C. A. in India has made such a definite effort to 
mediate to every Christian agency in that land the best social 
guidance that could be secured. 

Such agencies are specialized eyes and brains for the whole 
body of missionaries, concentrating their attention on certain 
specific evils that should be fought (for example, in Japan, 
licensed prostitution, the geisha system, the liquor traffic, and 
the overwork of women and children in the industrial sys- 
tem) ; and focussing attention on certain positive and con- 
structive undertakings, such as institutional churches, the 
promotion of playgrounds, and the like. 

Christian statesmen point out in the current missionary 
year-book for Japan that the labor movement in that land 
cannot be met by the Government or by organized labor alone. 
"There is an insistent call for Christian men and Christian 
organizations to add the salt of the kingdom, which alone 
can save laws from being mechanical and can lead both 
laborers and employers to seek not their own advantage but 
each other's good."' 



2 " The Christian Movement in the Japanese Empire, 19 17," P- 323. 

145 



[VII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Now when the attempt is not merely the conversion of the 
Japanese but the Christianization of Japan itself, how much 
it rejoices one to see the Japanese themselves taking full 
initiative in these matters. For example, when the late 
Tsurukichi Hatano, after having squandered a fortune in 
riotous living, is rescued in Kobe by Christian effort, and 
reconciled to his outraged wife and family, principles are 
instilled which later bear fruit in a most marked embodiment 
of the Christian attitude in Japan's modern industry. For 
this penniless prodigal introduced silk culture into his region 
and eventually developed a silk filature, where 3,000 workers 
produce the best silk thread of Japan. Is it not inspiring to 
know that the Gunsei Silk Filature Company has regularly 
recurring holidays for its women workers, the provision of 
religious services, a community hospital, night and day schools, 
a working day which does not kill, with baths and comfort- 
able living quarters — all so unlike the harsh exploitation of 
modern industrial Japan? And there are others — Mr. Ko- 
bayashi, Mr. Obara, a dozen others — who are far ahead of 
public opinion in the way in which they are introducing Chris- 
tian standards of industrial betterment into the new life of 
Japan. 

As another example of how the Christian spirit becomes 
indigenous, one may instance the fight against the social evil 
in Japan. Some two decades ago a Christian missionary did 
a monumicntal piece of work for Japan and for her enslaved 
women in a great attempt for social purity. Later, a Chris- 
tian community, led by the President of the Lower House 
of Parliament, secured the abolishment of public houses in 
their district. Still later Miss Hayashi, the Jane Addams of 
Japan, backed by pastors in a vigorous forty-day campaign, 
secured a ruling forbidding the opening of quarters in Osaka. 
Of recent years there has been no other more marked social 
activity in Japan than the way these Christians have carried 
on a nation-wide campaign for purity. Through crowded 
public lectures, through smaller church meetings, by the send- 
ing over the Empire of many thousand small publications, and 
by issuing 3,000 copies of an ably-edited book of i4o pages 
on prostitution, public opinion has been tremendously ad- 
vanced and concrete tangible results attained. The significant 
thing here is not simply that a great measure of success has 
been achieved against this strongly-entrenched and ancient 

146 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-c] 

evil, but that the fight has of late been waged with Japanese 
initiative. 

IV 

China also furnishes inspiring examples of attempting great 
things for God in the Christianization of the social order. 
The president of a mission college situated a thousand miles 
inland was attempting great social ends for that land when, 
in addition to his longing for direct and individual conver- 
sions in his college, he was arranging for a far-reaching 
experiment. When last in America he was negotiating with 
a Christian shoe manufacturer to go to China, in order to 
erect and run a big sh9e plant on Christian lines. Thus would 
he give to that inland region a model in modern industry, 
vastly different from the Western methods of exploitation 
which have set the standard in the coast cities of China. The 
call has come for other Christian business men — tanners, 
hatmakers, dyers, spinners — who will go out to lead clean 
honest lives and who will stamp their Christian character, 
not only on the lives of their employes, but on the whole 
awakening industrial system of that land. 

But again, the accomplishment of such social results by 
foreigners is not the highest purpose even in thi^ sphere. 
For to a certain extent they can attain their end through 
giving orders and exacting obedience. Results obtained in 
this way are as nothing compared with those where there is 
a sharing of purposes. The world Christian will not sim.ply 
want to accomplish a social result ; he will want to accomplish 
it in the way that is socially most educative, so that the result 
will include lives filled with a new purpose, as well as the per- 
formance of certain acts. It is most inspiring, therefore, to 
see in one part of the world after another lives that have 
caught the Christian purpose, men and women who have 
entered into conscious cooperation with God for the common 
good. 

The Presbyterian Mission Press at Shanghai was doubtless 
established to produce Christian literature for China, but no 
one would regret a by-product which has surpassed the origi- 
nal plant. Three compositors, one named Hsia and two named 
Bro, left the mission press to start, in a little room twelve 
by twelve, an establishment of their own. That was in 1891. 
Now their plant turns out over $2,000,000 worth of printed 

147 



[VII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

matter every year. The whole is conducted on Christian 
principles. Day schools are provided for the children of the 
employes and night schools for the employes themselves. As 
the largest printing house in China, its influence is incalcu- 
lable, for the printing business of China now has the Chris- 
tian stamp upon it. 

When Wong Kwong, the president of the Hanyang Iron 
Works near Hankow, had erected his plant he realized that 
the 1,500 prospective employes would build up some sort of 
a settlement about his works, and so because he was a 
Christian and because he knew some of the social solutions 
of the West, he made a model village. His idea of being a 
Christian in Hankow meant a school, ^a cooperative store, a 
tea-house, and a swimming pool as well as a church in the 
village of his workmen. 

W^e regard it as a mark of a world Christian that Yung 
Tao was impelled not only to distribute 1,000 copies of the 
Bible to his friends, but also, for example, to draft a bill 
making unlawful the continuance of polygamy. 

Promoters from the West become enthusiastic over certain 
outcroppings which indicate vast coal or iron fields below 
China's surface. Shall the world Christian be any less enthu- 
siastic over these outcroppings of Christian character, reveal- 
ing vast unworked resources of kindliness, teachableness, and 
love? Do you not feel yourself longing that not only China 
and Japan, but the whole globe, may be so freed from old 
outgrown standards and so linked up with the Inspirer of 
resourceful love that every here and there bits of heaven 
shall be found on earth? When you begin to frame great 
desires for this old world of ours, and when you let yourself 
really yearn for the vision God has given you, you have most 
surely attained one mark of a world Christian. 



Furthermore, the world Christian commits himself to the 
growth of an ideal world society on this planet. The hygienic 
and the economic, the social and the intellectual, the esthetic, 
the moral, and the religious relationships of mankind are to 
be permeated with 'the spirit of mutual love and service and 
good will. The report of the great ecumenical conference of 
missionaries at Edinburgh says that "the evangelization of 
Africa means something more than the introduction of the 

148 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-c] 

Gospel, with existing forms of social life. It means the intro- 
duction of education and letters, of agriculture and industry, 
of Christian marriage, and of due recognition of the sanctity 
of human life and of property. The problem before the 
Church is the creation of a Christian African civilization."^ 
Shall we balk before this huge task as though we had no God? 

In aiming at this sevenfold penetration of earth's whole 
life with Christian attitudes, nothing is foreign to the world 
Christian. Everything has an interest to him, since everything 
bears upon this greatest of enterprises. He has been able 
to grasp the whole globe, so that whatever affects the relation 
of man to man or nation to nation is his concern. 

And hence we always find among the Church's ambassadors 
to other lands men who have been true statesmen. Dr. W. A. 
P. Martin rendered a conspicuous piece of international serv- 
ice in introducing China to international law — a concept new 
to the Eastern mind. Guido Verbeck, within ten years of his 
arrival in Japan, was called to Tokyo to found the Japanese 
educational system ; through his cooperation, the first Japanese 
students were sent to America ; in 1872 he proposed that 
epoch-making Japanese World^s Commission ; he had the 
Government place its medical college under German leader- 
ship ; and with his advice the French legal code was introduced. 
For a long time he was the only foreign counselor of the 
Government. Conscientious, broadminded, cosmopolitan, he 
was an interpreter of the larger Christian friendship in that 
formative period of Japan's new life. Cyrus Hamlin one 
day would be teaching a poor Armenian how to make and sell 
Boston rat-traps for the support of himself and others ; on 
another he would be casting a steam pipe in his seminary 
workshop. One day he would be setting up an engine with the 
help of Ure's "Dictionary of the Arts" to supply bread for 
Britain's Crimean armies ; on another he would be tempering 
mill-picks for the dressing of his mill-stones. But all the 
while, whether as Christian educator and founder of Robert 
College at Constantinople, or as maker of bread or flour or 
stoves, Cyrus Hamlin was thinking internationally — he was a 
missionary statesman. Dugald Christie of Mukden, deco- 
rated by five emperors, unappalled by the dread pneumonic 
plague that was devastating Manchuria in 1910-11, fought it 



3 " World's Missionary Conference," 1910, I, p. 206. 

149 



[VII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

hand to hand until the plague had passed. He then sum- 
moned an international conference which resulted in the 
discovery of the germ of this disease, which hitherto had 
killed every victim it had attacked. The Jesuits put their 
ideal high, and demanded that each member of their order 
be broadly competent. "Those who wish to become Christ's 
companions in the noble enterprise of propagating Christianity 
must be determined to distinguish themselves in the service 
of their heavenly King. They are not to be satisfied with 
being ordinary soldiers in the army, but they are to constitute 
as it were Christ's bodyguard. Hence the name of the society, 
Ta Compania de Jesus.' " 

It is only when we interpret the aim of the world Christian 
as Christianizing the whole social order of the whole world 
that any final or adequate definiteness of purpose comes to 
the modern man. Used to sizable enterprises, world-wide in 
their scope, nothing less than such an aim will command, his 
loyalty. A hundred million dollars no longer seems too much 
to comprehend or to manage. Endowed with such a sum, 
the Rockefeller Foundation, aiming constructively to "promote 
the well-being of mankind throughout the world," forms its 
world-wide organization for applying scientific knowledge to 
human welfare, and the means — research, medical education, 
public health administration, survey and commissions, ex- 
change of specialists and student migrations — follow naturally. 
For such a sum the Y M C A calmly made its plea after 
having wisely administered half that amount. With the War's 
revelation of capacities for sacrifice and cooperative attain- 
ment, the day of small enterprises has been outgrown. 

This world aim of the Christian, furthermore, is one that 
has no individual or even national flavor. All the men of 
good will of whatever nation or religion, who want this earth 
to become a decent place in which to live, can join in six- 
sevenths of the aim. More and more, as Christian men and 
women manifest in life, and not alone in profession, the 
vitality of our Lord, all will unite in the seventh as well. 
They, too, will want as man's highest good that he should be 
Christ-like. 

What other demand than this sevenfold aim is big and 
true and real enough to unite earth's family in cooperative 
objective endeavor? To make health the possible attainment 
for all; to abolish all necessity for existence below the poverty 

150 



COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-c] 

line the world around; to enable each human being through 
education to enter as far as possible into his heritage; to 
discover and to eradicate all causes of social maladjustment; 
to develop capacities of response in all to sunsets and flowers, 
to stars and trees; to pierce down with discrimination into 
what is right; to know our Father and the One whom he sent 
— this is a program of a world Christian and one in which 
private-mindedness may be permanently submerged. 

Even heretofore hard-won secrets of nature have been 
made at once available for the world, and advance in any 
nation against disease has not been hoarded for the good of 
one's own group. We are thankful for the professional ethics 
which holds scientists and physicians to so noble a standard. 
We need this spirit universalized, and made even more con- 
scious and directive. It is only by our working together, pool- 
ing results and organizing for effectiveness, that the task 
which God has opened out before us can ever be accomplished. 
*'We can do it if we will," said the men of the haystack ; "We 
can do it and we will," said a later world Christian, Samuel 
B. Capen. 

VI 

Now something must happen to the Church if it is going 
even to look at this mark of a world Christian. What is the 
largest appeal that comes to your mind when the Church is 
mentioned? For many it is a summons to individual salva- 
tion and to fall in with a program that will extend religious 
comfort to others and encourage them to develop individual 
Christian virtues. The Church sometimes calls to other aims,, 
but it does not call to them with sufficient authority and confi- 
dence and conviction. A rallying-call must be sounded for a 
great adventure. Nothing less than a mighty enterprise will 
satisfy the souls of our youth today. Girls who have been 
driving ambulances in France will not be satisfied with reading 
a selection once a month in a missionary society. 

But suppose it were universally recognized, that request for 
church membership meant tenfold more eagerness for coopera- 
tive effort for earth's richest reconstruction than for future 
individual good, then people would not be fearing whether 
the Church could retain the interest of those brave lads who 
have faced the supreme sacrifice. Why should they shrink 
up until they possess a vision no larger than a cozy, little, 

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[VII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

comfortable, but competitive, congregation in their old home 
town? Is there no great program to which they can conse- 
crate their lives? Are they simply to sink back unto the 
old self-centered ends? The glory of a Christ-filled world 
must be set forth as an object definite enough to arouse in- 
terest, and appealing enough to command one's utmost loyalty. 
We ought to be able to go to the man most indifferent to the- 
Church and say: "Here is a big thing — zvhy are you not in 
it? We are zvorking for the enfranchisement and ennoble- 
ment of every single human life, the perfecting of human 
society in all its myriad activities and relationships, the trans- 
formation of the kingdoms of this earth until they have be- 
come the kingdom of our God and his Christ, the Christian- 
ization of all life everywhere." 

"What are Christians put into the world for, except 
to do the impossible in the strength of God?" said General 
S. C. Armstrong, the founder of Hampton Institute. The 
very developments which have accompanied the War compel 
the Church to face a parting of the ways. Surely the Church 
will not shrink from this enlarged program as too great for 
its strength. That would be an acknowledgment to the world 
of poverty of faith in the living, present God, whose nature 
it is to work with infinite resource through man. 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. Why do people sacrifice so much more willingly for 
patriotism than for religion? 

2. Why will people spend themselves more for democracy 
than for Christian Missions? 

3. What similarities exist between the highest aims of war 
and of the missionary program? 

4. How w^ould you formulate the justification of missionary 
work amongst obscure or dying peoples? 

5. What attitude would you take toward a protest such as 
the following: "Of course these moral and social reforms 
are all well enough in their way, but we must not forget 
that our real mission is to preach the Gospel"? 

6. Discuss the relation of the task of evangelizing (that is, 
preaching the Gospel to) the world to the task of Christianiz- 
ing the world. Can either task be said to be more binding 
than the other? 

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COURAGE FOR WORLD PURPOSES [VII-c] 

7. How broad do you think Christ's interests would be if 
he were with us today in body? 

8. What part did Christ give men in the Christianization 
of the world? 

9. Is it worth while to attempt to establish throughout the 
world the social institution called *'the Church"? Why? 
What are some of the problems and difficulties in the task? 

10. What arguments would you use with a person who 
wanted to limit his program to his own home community, to 
lead him to take into consideration the world? 

11. Draft a statement of the largest and most comprehensive 
task that your mind can grasp. 

12. From the point of view of winning the whole world to 
the democracy of God, of which is there greater need today, 
foreign missionaries, or men and women who stay, for work 
in America? 



153 



CHAPTER Vin 

Readinqss to Pay the Cost 

The greatest revelation of the War was not the wickedness 
and depravity of mankind, but its unsuspected capacity for 
devotion at any cost to ideals and duty that are supreme. 
This readiness of men and of women both in and behind 
the lines to undergo sacrifice was surprising and inspiring. 
A new life has been manifested. Thousands who had lived 
self -centered lives tasted the joy of abandon to utterly un- 
selfish service, even unto death. Through it all even children 
learned that there are times when progress requires the cheer- 
ful payment of a cost. 

In the light of the stupendous sacrifices crowded into each 
day of the Great War, we must urge the claims for heroism 
in the more normal times ahead. The declaration of peace 
slill leaves multifarious enemies of social welfare that must 
be fought for years to come by means of the united efforts of 
men and women. Every Christian citizen of the world must 
gird himself for this struggle and enter the contest each day 
with fortitude and sacrifice. 

Eighth Week, First Day: The Stigmata of Jesus 

In labors more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, 
in stripes above measure, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five 
times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I 
beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered 
shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; 
in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of rob- 
bers, in perils from my countrymen, in perils from the 
Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, 
in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in 
labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, 
in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Besides those 
things that are without, there is that which presseth 

154 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-i] 

upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches. — II Cor. 
11:23-28. 

Violence, exposure, privation — Paul knew what all these 
were. His physical sufferings had been such that it seemed 
that he was "always bearing about in the body the dying of 
Jesus" (II Cor. 4:10). But they were accepted as part of 
the task. Ordinarily Paul would never think of mentioning 
them, for where Christ and the Gospel are concerned the 
sufferings of the flesh are forgotten. 

Those who have followed Paul in world ministry have 
often had to pay the price of service with their bodies. In 
the early days of work in Africa a large portion of the time 
and strength of missionaries was taken up in pushing their 
way through interminable jungles and pestiferous swamps. 
As a result they died prematurely by the scores and hundreds, 
so that for a generation or two on an average every convert 
cost the life of a European. Within two years of Mackay's 
arrival in Africa two of his original party of eight had been 
massacred, two had died of disease, and two had been in- 
valided home. The first worker on the Gold Coast died 
within six months ; his two successors died within fourteen 
months ; and the next two workers died within one month 
of their arrival. In Zanzibar at least half the men and women 
sent out died within a year of their arrival on the field. In 
Japan alone, 1,000 Catholic missionaries and 200,000 converts 
had died for their faith before modern missions had started. 
The average martyr death of Christians from the West was 
over two for each year of the first century of Protestant 
missions in China. Who would imagine that Mexico could 
count its martyrs to the extent of eighty-four? James Han- 
nington's message, "Tell the King that I purchase the road 
to Uganda with my life, and give my life for those who 
kill me," shows the spirit that has dominated untold numbers, 
not only in Africa but in other lands. 

But death is ofttimes easier than life. Can you picture 
Xavier striding forward for twenty hours over the hot 
sands to relieve the Parava Christians of Cape Comorin? 
Or turn to James Gilmour working alone among the nomad 
Buddhists of Mongolia. Go with him on his twxnty-three 
mile walk through the desert, with swollen and bleeding feet, 
in order to make possible a personal conversation with the 

155 



[VIII-2] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

first Mongol who had shown a desire to be a Christian. 
Henry Martyn's words, spoken two days after his arrival in 
Calcutta, "Now let me burn out for God," were prophecies 
of his seven brief but fruitful years of missionary service. 

And the pioneer converts have their cost to pay as well. 
^'There, take this and that," and down came the big stick 
of a great-fisted man on Prem Das's back. The angry Hindu 
landlord was incensed that low-caste Christians should be 
taught. And so Prem Das went away bleeding and internally 
injured. His friends advised Prem Das to sue the lordly 
Brahman. Prosecute? No, on the contrary, Christlike, he 
forgave his persecutor, and returned to organize the school. 
Again the ire of the landlord led to a beating, and he was 
ordered never to show his face again. But Prem Das only 
went to his friend, the missionary, and said : "Sahib, let me 
have a dozen first Hindi books. I am going to open the 
school again, and we are going to keep it open." "But won't 
it mean more beatings?" "Perhaps, but this is Jesus' work, 
and I am a Jesus man and, beatings or no beatings, Jesus can 
and will conquer this Brahman." 

Branded, speared, poisoned, stoned, crucified, morally 
tempted, ostracized — converts have had to meet the cost of 
being Christian. 

"From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast" 
come thrilling accounts of those who have carried about in 
their body the dying of the Lord Jesus. If a Chinese mail 
carrier can be found dead on the Kien Yang road, his hands 
all gashed and bleeding because he had clung till death to the 
little bundle of foreign letters entrusted to his care, what 
about the faithfulness of a man whom Christ entrusts with 
a sacred and eternal message to his fellowmen? Stanley 
said Mackay faced death — "with calm blue eyes that never 
winked." May God help us to face the hardships in our path 
with equal fortitude and courage. 

Eighth Week, Second Day: The Cost of Steward- 
ship 

Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of 
the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as touching 
the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal, persecuting the 
church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, 
found blameless. Howbeit what things were gain to me, 

156 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-2] 

these have I counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I 
count all things to be loss for the excellency o£ the knowl- 
edge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I suffered the 
loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I 
may gain Christ. — Phil. 3 : 5-9. 

Stewardship has often been too narrowly interpreted as 
applying to monc}^ alone, when in fact we are trustees of life 
itself — our time, our talents, our influence, and our property. 
Paul unhesitatingly placed all these things at the service of 
the highest. A great career was open to Paul before he 
started for Damascus. He names points of inherited privi- 
lege, as well as matters of personal choice, which had already 
brought him repute and influence. Those things — and the 
career they opened out for him — he counted as that which is 
thrown to the dogs or the leavings of the table, in comparison 
with the appropriation of Christ with all His grace and glory. 
Stewardship of time and talent and life may lead some of 
us to lay aside careers enticing in themselves, but which are 
not the great world work God opens out before us. 

But to all of us an enthusiasm for a Christian world will 
mean a cost in that form of extended personality which we 
call property. It will mean running one's business with an 
accounting to God. It will mean a systematic, intelligent in- 
vestment for God of all surplus beyond one's actual need. 

We have had great leaders in this sense of trusteeship both 
at home and abroad. Livingstone shortly after his conversion 
wrote : "Feeling that the salvation of men ought to be the 
chief desire and aim of every Christian, I resolved that I 
would give to the cause of missions all that I might earn 
beyond what I required for bare subsistence." Later he made 
a declaration even more explicit: "I will place no value on 
anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the 
Kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of 
that Kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giv- 
ing away or keeping it, I shall most promote the glory of 
Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity.'* 
William Carey kept for himself and his poor relatives a tenth 
only of his income, and he and his two companions paid back 
twenty-fold all that they had ever received from their society. 
Cyrus Hamlin devoted to his Master all the profit of his 
genius. With a surplus of $25,000 he built thirteen churches 
for the American Board in various parts of the Turkish Em- 

157 



[VIlI-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

pire. He turned into the work of the Board more money than 
he received as salarj: during the entire period of his service. 
In fact practically all missionaries definitely relinquish all 
claim to funds earned beyond their living wage. Thus 
doctors, educators, and missionary specialists of various kinds 
are annually turning over to Board treasuries every dollar 
above their modest salaries. It is beginning to dawn on 
Christians that this kind of cost is not a matter of geography. 
Why should it be applied to those who go abroad, and not to 
those who stay at home? 

Christian converts have shown marvelous strength of 
character in the way in which they have unhesitatingly laid 
aside inviting careers for the sake of Christ, and have paid 
the price involved. Let us take Paul Sawayama as a type of 
many. He was one of the early students from Japan to be 
educated in this country. The Mikado's Government in 1876 
•offered every inducement in the way of salary to young men 
returning from the West. Influential relatives and friends 
were eager to have him enter this open door to luxury. But 
Paul Sawayama had formed the vision of a living Japanese 
Church. He wanted to instil into it such a spirit of growth 
and independence that it would be free from slavish, feeble 
leaning on foreign support. He remembered God's promise 
to those who seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness, and refused the career which would have given him 
hundreds, for the shepherding of a little congregation that 
could pay him but seven dollars a month. But Paul Sawayama 
still lives on in the independent spirit of the Japanese Church 
— a spirit which he did much to form. With a world whose 
needs demand the mobilization of every Christian force, what 
of prestige or career or funds or leisure are you counting as 
"refuse" for the joy and privilege of working for deeper 
values ? 



Eighth Week, Third Day : The Price of Maintaining 
Spiritual Sensitiveness 

And every man that striveth in the games exerciseth 
self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a 
corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore 
so run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, as not beating the 
air: but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage: lest 

158 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-4] 

by any means, after that I have preached to others, I 
myself should be rejected. — I Cor. 9: 25-27. 

The soul has its own great warfare if it is going to keep 
fit for its world task. Paul knew what it was to battle, and 
he likened the Christian's life over and over again to a war- 
fare (Rom. 13:12, 13; II Cor. 6:7; Eph. 6:11-17; I Thess. 
5:8; I Tim. I : 18; II Tim. 2:3, 4). 

Nowadays, apart from the recent war, love's cost is not 
usually physical death, nor is it accomplished by one supreme 
act of self-sacrifice. It is rather a series of small renuncia- 
tions or struggles for victory. It is a dying daily (Luke 
9:23), holding in control our ambitions and secret thoughts 
to the end of absolute and perfect service. Any one of these 
things may in themselves seem insignificant, but those who 
have tried to be faithful and constant in this discipline know 
that the metaphor of crucifying the flesh with its passions 
and lusts (Gal. 5:24) is by no means too strong. 

Many times on the mission field a missionary can get no 
more time v/ith a hungry inquirer than Jesus had with the 
woman at the well. Such experiences make one want to 
keep his life at a high level, so as to be ready. If those few 
minutes are to be the only time that the given person is likely 
ever to have with an ambassador of Jesus Christ, one would 
want to say something living and vital, that will change life 
as Jesus changed that woman's at the well. But Why put it 
off in Africa and India? There are people touching you 
every day, who need just what your representatives go to 
give to other lands. A world Christian w^ill see the signifi- 
cance of opportunity in each little, separate contact, whether 
it is in China or at home, just as much as the Food Con- 
servator could see significance for a world war in the leavings 
on a child's plate. The Kingdom's battlefront is where you 
are, and demands the price of vigilance in maintaining your- 
self at your very best. 

Eighth Week, Fourth Day: The Price of a 
Burdened Heart 

Besides those things that are without, there is that 
which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches. 
Who is weak, and I am not weak? who is caused to 
stumble, and I burn not? — II Cor, 11:28, 29. 

159 



[VIII-4] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

But we were gentle in the midst of you, as when a 
nurse cherisheth her own children: even so, being affec- 
tionately desirous of you, we were well pleased to impart 
unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own 
souls, because ye were become very dear to us. — I Thess. 
2 : 7, 8. 

Paul's solicitude for his converts was not unlike that of 
a mother. He addresses the untoward Galatians as, ''My 
little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ 
be formed in you." ''Now we live," he writes to the 
Thessalonians, "if ye stand fast in the Lord" (I Thess. 
3:8). "Ye are in our hearts," he cries to the Corinthians, 
"to live together — and to die together." Note the passionate 
words of the twenty-ninth verse above — "Who is weak and I 
am not weak? Who is made to stumble and I burn not?" 
In such wonderful ways Paul identified himself with others. 

But some will say, "Does this mean that I must always live 
at a high tension and never have any of the joy of life?" 
Well, Jesus did not give this impression to those who were 
constantly with him. They seemed most impressed with his 
joy. Nor do missionaries give the impression of being more 
oppressively serious than other people ; you could not pick 
them out as being long-faced beyond all others. 

And yet there were times when Jesus cried, "How often 
would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her own brood under her wings!" (Luke 13:34). 
Similarly, his follower, the dying Xavier, checked before 
China's closed doors and inaccessible interior, cried, "O rock, 
rock, when wilt thou open?" 

Certainly anyone with the slightest spiritual sensitiveness 
must have times when the heart is made very heavy by heathen 
surroundings. But what about the place right where we are? 
If we were not so callous and all too blind would not we also 
have our times of "anxiety for all the churches"? Would 
there be no situation which would draw forth tender solici- 
tude, as a mother with her ozmi children? 

When something comes into our lives that came into Paul's 
we, too, shall have our times when we shall look out upon 
the world's needs with unspeakable pain. The great question 
for us will then be — how can we recover them, teach them, 
win them? We, too, shall know what it is to have a passion 
like Paul's. 

160 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-5] 

Eighth Week, Fifth Day : The Cost of Prayer 

And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose 
up and went out, and departed into a desert place, and 
there prayed. — Mark i : 35. 

And it came to pass in these days, that he went out into 
the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in prayer 
to God. — Luke 6: 12. 

For many people, almost any cost is easier to pay than that 
of prayer. It is the highest effort the human spirit can make ; 
it is the putting forth of vital energy; and many do not love 
enough to pay the price. The formation and the practice of 
the habit of prayer in world service is something that is 
possible behind every closed door. But how we shrink from 
the investment of time, of concentration, and of sympathy 
that it requires ! Many would find it easier to give their 
bodies to be burned, or to bestow all their goods to feed the 
poor, than to engage in a continuous, intelligent, prevailing 
prayer life. 

But when we turn to Jesus, we find an example that draws 
us on to a life of prayer. In him we see one whose work 
was conceived, accomplished, and conserved in communion 
with God. His great followers, too, have been great in prayer. 
Judson, finishing his Burmese Bible, took up the last page 
and, on his knees, dedicated it to God in prayer. James Gil- 
mour, when he caught the first glimpse of the land for which 
he was to give his life, a martyr missionary, knelt down and 
gave thanks to God for a redeemed Mongolia. "I lay in tears," 
wrote Henry Martyn, "for the unfortunate natives of this 
country." Dr. John R. Mott, out of his wide experience 
and after special inquiries into the sources of the spiritual 
movements that are doing most to vitalize and transform 
individuals and communities, witnesses : "The workers and 
leaders who have accomplished most in extending and build- 
ing up the Kingdom of God have been those who gave to 
prayer for others and for interests outside of their own lives 
the foremost place in the use of their time and strength. . . . 
At times it has been difBcult to discover the hidden spring, 
but invariably where I have had the time and patience to do 
so, I have found it in an intercessory prayer-life of great 
reality."^ 



1 •* Intercessors, the Primary Need," p. 2. 

161 



[VIII-6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Refusal to pay the cost by the Church behind the lines, 
means defeat in the front-line trenches. We are busy with 
federations, councils, and continuation committees ; with union 
movements, surveys, and the mapping out of fields and re- 
sources. Into these things seriousness and strength of pur- 
pose is being put, and this marks a real advance. But not 
until the Church learns to pray with an intensity and devotion 
more characteristic of its work, will the Kingdom come with 
power. It is possible even for a five talent man to wrap one 
of those talents up in a napkin and lay it aside from use. 
How about the capacity for prayer that God has given you? 

Eighth Week, Sixth Day : The Sobering Alternative 

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat 
fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but 
if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth his life 
loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall 
keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him 
follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant 
be: if any man serve me, him will the Father honor. — 
John 12: 24-26. 

One may refuse to pay the price of love; and Jesus points 
out the inevitable result — fruitlessness. Like a grain of wheat 
which may be eaten or may be sown, so our lives may be 
used for present, temporary enjoyment and benefit, or, fore- 
going self-centered profit, may fall in the furrow which alone 
yields the hundred-fold fruitage. 

Horace Tracy Pitkin did not hesitate at the choice, either 
for himself or for his little son. When, during the Boxer 
Rebellion, with wife and child far off in America, murder 
and foul deeds had at last come to his very door, just before 
his tragic martyrdom, he called Lao-man, the faithful, to his 
side and gave one parting message : "Lao-man," he said, *'tell 
the mother of little Horace to tell Horace that his father's 
last wish was that when he is twenty-five years of age, he 
should come to China as a missionary." 

Spring after spring men sow their choicest grain, instead 
of selling it in the market, because they know that except it 
die it abideth alone ; but if it die it beareth much fruit. Ox- 
ford and Cambridge men did this in the Battle of the Marne. 
Vacant places on farms, in factories, and in college halls 

162 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-;] 

show that America made the great choice too. Sacrifice, self- 
surrender, death are the conditions of the highest life; selfish- 
ness means abiding alone. The question faces us — What of 
my life? Am I consuming it for myself? Or am I sowing 
it deep down for the increase a hundred-fold? To spend 
one's life for the highest cause that comes one's way is — 
as some one puts it — to fulfil life's highest destiny, be the 
years few or many. 

Eighth Week, Seventh Day: Cost, Continuous and 
Supreme 

To wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world 
unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, 
and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 
— II Cor. 5: 19. 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only be- 
gotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not 
perish, but have eternal life. — John 3: 16. 

What is it costing God these days? What has it cost 
God in the past to bring us even where we are? W^ho would 
dare to answer? And yet we are catching glimpses of the 
heart of God. As we suffer, not because of wrong that we 
have done, but that peace or justice or progress may ensue, 
we gain an insight into the experience of a Christ-like God. 
Hosea found a new God through his patient suffering for the 
regeneration of his unfaithful wife. America, through her 
gift of her best young manhood in the War, through her 
vicarious suffering to bring about a world of better relation- 
ships, will understand more clearly the cost of God-like love. 

Man has not always believed in God's solidarity with him in 
all experience. God has been thought of as far off, watching 
from outside the drama of history, only occasionally making 
a miraculous thrust into human affairs. Slowly and all too 
inadequately we are realizing, however, the significance of 
God's immanence in history. We see him not merely as a 
sympathetic and well-disposed onlooker, but as an actor in 
the affairs of men. Above all he is the One who cares, and 
there is no suffering of ours in which he does Hot share. 
"In all their affliction he was afflicted" (Isa. 63: 9). 

Why did God thus enter our lives of sin and failure? Why 
was the cross? The answer is that God is involved in his 

163 



[VIII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

inmost life with man, in order that man may be made whole. 
Good is contagious as well as evil. Just as we are involved 
one with the other in the consequences of sin, so there is a 
solidarity between man and man, and between man and God, 
that makes available for others the wholesome effects of 
good. 

The cross gives us eyes to see God's will to pay the cost of 
love. As deepening experience reveals to us the measure 
of that cost, we realize that such a giving can be answered 
only by a love in kind. A gratitude that does not cost seems 
all too inadequate. Jesus tells us we must enter into God's 
experience of the cross each day. No other reconstructive 
force is adequate to the perfecting of a world. 



COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



A generation that has paid the price of loyalty to the cause 
of world democracy will not respect a church that fails to pay 
the price of loyalty to her goal — the democracy of God, We 
certainly shall gain nothing by representing the demands of 
Christianity in small terms. The cost of being a world 
Christian is very real and very great. The Church has made 
a vast mistake if she has permitted us to think otherwise. 
Jesus never belittled the intensity of the struggle in which 
his followers were engaged, nor did he make light of the cost 
of discipleship. He plainly said that the servant need not 
expect to fare better than the Master. ''Ye shall be hated 
of all men for my name's sake. ... If they have called the 
master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his 
household?" (Matt. 10:22, 25). We are only beginning to 
glimpse the price that must be paid, in order to adjust human 
relationships to a thoroughly Christian standard. 

But we have been learning in the War that selfishness is 
not the supreme instinct in humanity. Ask the soldiers why 
they left our country to fight in the War, and they will tell 
you that it was for world democracy, to free humanity from 
militarism, for the integrity of all nations — spiritual reasons, 
every one. It was the idealism of unselfish service that 
mobilized America's energy in the War. Leaders in the suf- 
frage movement tell us that what women want is not protec- 

164 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-c] 

tion and segregation from the world's dark tasks, but the 
chance to share the burdens of thought and toil equally with 
men. And so Christ was a truer reader of hearts than, alas, 
his followers have often been, when he based his appeal 
for men and service upon the deeper, heroic, unselfish motives 
in human nature, rather than the superficial love of ease and 
pleasure and success. 

Garibaldi, also, knew men and summoned young Italy to the 
fight with these burning words : "I do not offer pay, pro- 
visions, or quarters ; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, 
battles, and death." Said Professor Denney at Edinburgh, in 
1910: '/When a voice like that is uttered in the Church by 
men wno have the right to utter it, then we can be sure that 
the thin ranks will fill up again and our King go forth con- 
quering and to conquer." 

In the perfecting of a world if we would move men deeply 
we, too, must appeal to heroic, and not to merely selfish, 
motives. In a day when men are making inconceivable sacri- 
fices for their ideals of justice and democracy, the only way 
for the Church to appeal at all is by presenting a more compre- 
hensive cause requiring still greater devotion. In other words, 
the Church must return for its regeneration to the kingdom 
vision and sacrificial devotion of its Founder. The Church 
must be militant. There must be virility in the venture. We 
must approach our youth not with the slogan, "Safety first," 
but with the call to risk all in fresh paths of honor, of glory, 
and of duty. For the Christianization of the individual, as 
well as of the whole social order on our globe, will call for 
more sustained endeavor, more superhuman energy, deeper 
sacrifice than the War in Europe drew upon. The time has 
fully passed — if in fact it ever existed — for the Church to 
win our youth by a soft and easy call to service. 

II 

As we look over the path by which world progress has 
come it would seem that we must recognize the indispensable- 
ness of sacrifice. Whoever really undertakes the task of 
turning the ideal of the democracy of God into reality will 
suffer. There is often, of course, that inevitable first cost 
of separation from those you love for service overseas. When 
Cyrus Hamlin informed his mother that he had decided to 
respond to God's call to go abroad for service, she broke 

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[VIII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

down and wept as he had never seen her weep before. But 
when she recovered her self-control, it was with a willingness 
to pay the cost: ''Cyrus, I have always expected it, and I 
have not a word to say, although I would have been so happy 
if I could have had my youngest son with me." Hundreds 
upon hundreds have been the mothers and the sons who have 
not rebelled at Christ's stern words : "He that loveth father 
or mother more than me is not worthy of me" (Matt. lo : 2>7) - 

We rejoice at China's progress, but we need our imagination 
quickened to see what it has cost. Behind this progress we 
can see Morrison working in his cellar with darkened win- 
dows. At times he is so ill he can only drag himself across 
the narrow room. The books upon which the pioneer trans- 
lator is working are piled about him, while the one Chinese 
helper that he has been able to secure carries a phial of poison 
ever with him, that he may end his life in case he is tortured 
far teaching the foreign-devil. Behind this progress you can 
also see old Gutzlaf, disguised as a native coolie, and hired 
out as a cook on a Chinese junk, shrinking ashore under 
cover of the darkness to distribute the first printed word for 
Christ from port to port on China's shores. Back of the 
progress also is the blood of noble martyrs. Not alone those 
from foreign soil, but thousands of Chinese Christians have 
laid down their lives. Over large districts of China only two 
per cent recanted when the death test came during the Boxer 
Rebellion. What China is today is in large part due to 
the firmness with which her Christian children bore ruin, 
torture, and death in order to retain the Pearl of great price. 

Less dramatic, but no less significant, are the burdens to be 
borne by courageous souls who must bear the brunt of intro- 
ducing many a social change. It still takes courage in China 
to leave a daughter's feet unbound. How far dare one follow 
Western ways in seeking to establish the new type of Chris- 
tian home? How much obedience is still due to parents? 
What are one's responsibilities to poor relatives? 

And when in these days every one is reading with more 
or less intelligence about Armenia, Kurdistan, and Persia, we 
may well recall how one hundred years ago Smith and Dwight, 
clothed to resemble Turkish merchants, in native costumes and 
with faces stained with the juices of a berry, blazed a trail 
through these lands for civilization. It was only in secret 
by the light of their evening camp fire that these pioneer 

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READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-c] 

missionaries were able to open up for us in authoritative 
writings the heart of the Turkish Empire. 

In quite another realm, our immunity from many tropical 
diseases has been purchased by the dearly-bought experience 
of hundreds who have gone down before these unconquered 
scourges. Many a robust constitution broke under the fevers 
of the tropics and many a white tombstone was raised in 
Africa and in the Orient before the problems of sanitation 
and adaptation of the white man's life to the tropics were 
conquered. Today, however, there are directions for each 
country which safeguard the health of the missionary as he 
makes his transition from one hemisphere to another. 

Think also of the almost superhuman toil that has gone into 
the reduction of languages to writing. Furthermore, the wis- 
dom of a generation of students has been gathered into a 
score of language schools, so that the cost of conquering a 
foreign tongue has been immensely lessened. The modern 
world worker enters into a vast intellectual heritage in the 
way of knowledge of customs and of the results of the com- 
parative study of religions, because of the painstaking re- 
searches of those who have gone before. 

Ill 

One might as well recognize from the start that the business 
of becoming a Christian is most difficult. Not the intellectual 
acceptance of certain explanations of theology hard to under- 
stand and therefore to believe, but the task of translating the 
spirit and principles of Jesus into the daily life — that is the 
supreme challenge to each of us. It will cause us to give up 
many a thing which habit or custom has let others feel is 
perfectly right. "We know," says a wise leader of the Church, 
''how unabashed selfishness is in the world and in the church. 
We know how many people there are who are lovers of 
pleasure rather than lovers of God, people who resent it as 
a kind of insult that they should be asked to give up anything, 
people who will not part with money, who will not give up 
their week-ends, who will not come under any kind of obliga- 
tion that fetters their liberty so that they can do something 
regularly for the good of the church, people who will not 
sacrifice an atom of their spare time or of their opportunities 
for mental culture or even for self-indulgence. They simply 

167 



[VIII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

will not do it, and they refuse even to look at the idea that 
it should be done seriously."" 

To many people the cost of discipleship will be the willing- 
ness to accept the challenge of the commonplace, to do the 
common thing — yet do it in Jesus' way. These are days 
when one has been thinking of heroism in terms of physical 
death, or of one single supreme act of sacrifice. And many 
men and women who volunteered for non-military service 
in France were sorely tested by the drudgery of their tasks. 
Stationed in some small town far from the firing-line, without 
the stimulus of travel and excitement, asked to sweep out a 
hut — even though he was a brilliant Ph.D. — many a volunteer 
was caught in the deadly monotony of the unspectacular, and 
found himself hardly equal to the price. Many here in 
America chafed under the burden of a hidden post. It would 
be easy, they thought, to put on a uniform and go to France. 
Leading a forlorn hope in battle, saving the guns, creeping 
up the hillside under a heavy rifle-fire, laying down one's life 
quickly in a moment of enthusiasm, requires one kind of hero- 
ism. No less heroic is the facing day by day for thirty 
years the dangers of a deadly climate, the warding-ofT of 
disease and death under scorching heat and chilly cold, and 
the undergoing of discomforts month after month as many 
a missionary has done. These avenues for commonplace 
heroism are still open to tho.se who are willing to enlist for 
service in non-Christian lands. All, however, must be ready 
for the steady cost of the Christian life in doing homespun 
work, in accepting the humble task, in a series of small re- 
nunciations, each in itself apparently insignificant. 

For the exceptional man, the cost is from a different angle. 
He is -tempted to use his exceptional ability to win for him- 
self a place where he will be freed from strife and struggle. 
If, through the possession of ten talents, he could lay his 
burdens on the poor one-talent members of society, he has 
felt it legitimate to do so. But Christ stands before him, 
challenging him to choose the place marked by hardships, 
and to win through greatest service the greatest recognition. 

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." How many 
shrink from the cost that this would involve, or frankly be- 
lieve it quite impracticable ! "What !" one says, "treat men 

2 James Denney, in "Report of World's Missionary Conference, 1910," Vol. 
IX, pp. 327, 328. 

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READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-c] 

as brothers? Love them? Why, three-quarters of mankind 
are mcapable of understanding love and will take advantage 
of what they consider weakness. Our servants would despise 
us, our employes and competitors would rob us, and inferior 
races would rebel against necessary authority. The world 
would be turned upside down and no property or honor or 
life would be safe for a single day." Jesus neither ignores 
nor denies this. 'Tt may be so," he says, ''it will be so some- 
times ; it was so with me." Love sometimes has no material 
defense, and while mankind remains as it is, love may be 
imposed upon. "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the 
midst of wolves" (Matt. lo: i6). "In this world ye have 
tribulation : but be of good cheer ; I have overcome the 
world" (John 16:33). "Some of you shall they cause to be 
put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's 
sake. And not a hair of your head shall perish" (Luke 21 : 
16-18). Jesus does not obscure the fact that discipleship may 
mean death — a death, however, that is the open door to life. 

IV 

Does the Church sense the cost it must be ready to meet? 
Listen to Bhataricharya, an Indian student in the second 
largest city of our land. One day, walking with an American 
friend, he happened to remark that he hoped India would 
become Christian. Knowing that he was a Hindu, this state- 
ment surprised his friend and he asked why he wanted 
India to becom.e Christian. It turned out that this Indian 
had come to the conclusion from his university studies that 
religion in general was economically bad for a country; that 
a land would be better oft: without any religion ; but that if 
India must have a religion it would be best for it to have 
Christianity, "because it costs so little." That was the im- 
pression made on this keen foreign student by church life as 
he saw it. 

We were staggered at the colossal internecine strife amongst 
the nations. But we do well to remind ourselves that part 
of the responsibility for conditions that could make war 
possible rests upon a divided Church. To attain reunion will 
involve a real cost. Manifest narrowness and ancient preju- 
dices must be laid aside. Each sect has nursed some real 
and precious experience — an expeiience that all should have — 

169 



[VIII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

but in holding to its grain of truth it has too often been 
blind to the grains of truth that others have. What each one 
needs is an awakening of his whole religious nature. 

When this realization of need comes, then each branch of 
the Church may be ready to acknowledge that others have 
emphasized elements that can be overlooked only by impover- 
ishing one's largest life. One denomination, for example, 
has stood out for the freedom of congregational life. An- 
other, historically, has laid emphasis on the right of each 
individual soul to direct communion with God without inter- 
vention of book, creed, or priest. Still another has acted on 
the advisability of having an educated ministry, and of certain 
democratic elements in government. 

In a reaction against Rome some have starved their esthetic 
sense, and we therefore turn with joy to a church that has 
ever continued to nurture a sense of beauty and reverence in 
form and ritual. For many it will go against the grain to 
g^iv^ up prejudices against art and ritual in worship — preju- 
dices which have made much of our American life unneces- 
sarily ugly. It may cost Puritan pride something to acknowl- 
edge that any communion has developed a greater capacity 
for worship and a finer loyalty to the Church than it pos- 
sesses. Just as hard, on the other hand, will it be for others 
to acknowledge that independence and reliance may be de- 
veloped, as well as very real needs met, by elements of freedom 
in prayer and worship. We are eager for a church willing 
to pay the price of bringing together these isolated values 
and of rearing up a generation able and eager to vibrate in 
response to the whole gamut of religious experience in worship 
and in service. We need comprehension in the Church, not 
so much to make reunion possible, as for the sake of truth 
and fulness of life. 

The trend of the times indicates that the Church must also 
face the cost of breaking over old conventions. The present 
expectation that one man should combine within himself the 
functions of pastor, teacher, and preacher may have to be 
given up for a greater differentiation in the ministry. The 
practical departments of our leading seminaries tell us that 
thousands of men are laboring to produce two sermons a 
week where only a few have the preaching gift. Instead 
of tying the natural preacher down to a single congregation 
that happens to be best able to pay him, it may become neces- 

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READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-cJ 

sary to share him with many places. In smaller parishes 
there may have to be more freedom in frankly reading great 
sermons. Thus could the clergy be freed from the tyranny 
of sermonizing, and be able to give time and leadership to 
making the Church a more dynamic institution. Furthermore, 
friendly visitation is important, but here again differentiation 
in the pastoral function is needed. Church members should 
carry much of this v^ork, so that the time and energy of the 
one outstanding member of a church's general staff should 
be conserved for the highest constructive leadership. New 
times demand new measures and the Church must be ready 
to pay the cost in alertness, flexibility, and far-seeing adapta- 
tion of means to ends. 

The clergy m.ust lead in this sacrificial life. If the fire 
burns intensely in the leader of the parish, it will spread. 
From one small church the pastor, the organist, and sixteen 
members of the choir volunteered at. once for war service. 
Is it any wonder that the enthusiasm for meeting national 
need was contagious through the congregation? Similarly, in 
days of peace if a lofty, but hardy, life of self-giving is 
embodied by the leaders of the Church, there will be plenty 
to follow, and answer to the call of sacrifice. 



Society must be ready to pay the cost of readjustment ac- 
cording to Christian principles. If Jesus were to come today, 
he could say, no less than when in Palestine, that the accept- 
ance of- his spirit and his teachings would cause a ferment 
and a shock right through society. For his teachings would 
still be new wine which would burst old wine-skins, and go 
against conservative standards. Men would still find his 
commandment new. We have to so small an extent embodied 
his spirit in our social order that his call to do so would 
still bring "not . . . peace but a sword" (Matt. 10:34), or, as 
another gospel puts it, would "cast fire upon the earth" (Luke 
12:49). We are so little like what we should be, that un- 
questionably we would have to be born again before we could 
even see in imagination his social ideal. 

W^e are not without prophetic leaders whose penetrating 
insight into the social application of Christ's teaching is show- 
ing us how loyalty to him will mean many a radical change in 

171 



[VIII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

standard and motive. We begin to be conscious of sin and 
injustice deep-seated in the very constitution of our social 
order. Who among us is ready to follow without compromise 
the pure standards of Jesus, though it mean a renouncing of 
long-time accepted values? 

The question must be squarely faced, for example, whether 
it is Christian ever to use another for personal ends without 
equal consideration of his welfare and advantage. Does it 
solve the problem to take some of the money that should 
have been given to wage-earners, and with it establish welfare 
work for them? Is the massive and finely articulated in- 
dustrial, commercial, and financial system, which has grown 
up in the last three-fourths of a century and which has per- 
meated all phases of our life, really Christian in its adminis- 
tration as long as its legal control is in the hands of private 
persons, who do not think of their responsibilities as social? 
Is the modern industrial system under which the means of 
production are all fenced off by private ownership too nearly 
the foster-mother of a new kind of slavery — a wage slavery, 
in which men are forced to sell their labor to others in order 
to gain the right to work? Is a regime under which one is 
more sure to make a fortune the further removed he is from 
the actual processes of production, compatible with a regime 
that gives first place to the one who serves the most? In 
business should the motive of making money be permitted 
to remain first and foremost? To what extent is the whole 
system of relentless competition consistent with the spirit 
of Jesus? If in non-Christian countries discipleship often 
means relinquishing fortune and family ties, is it too much 
to expect that those ambitions should be rooted out of our 
business and social life which are contrary to the mind of 
Christ? Is it right that many who are least necessary to 
society should be most imbursed? If one began to embody 
the Christian principle that service is superior to being served, 
or that life is not to be measured by the abundance of posses- 
sions, what awkward changes would be necessary in our social 
rewards and in our social conduct? 

Many are answering such questions as these in a way 
that would, for most of us, mean shouldering a new and 
heavy cross. For in reality we are at the dav/n of a new 
reformation, in which the principles and spirit of Jesus are 
being interpreted for modern life. 

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READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-c] 

VI 

For each nation the question must ultimately arise as to 
whether it is willing to pay the cost of being Christian. Al- 
ready men are saying that no nation with integrity should 
build itself up at the expense of weaker nations. And as 
in ordinary business life the private ownership of certain 
common and public utilities is being discountenanced, the day 
will undoubtedly come when nations will have to face the 
same principle and pay the cost of internationalizing Panama, 
and Gibraltar, and the Suez Canal. 

The cessation of the- War brought its great opportunity 
for nations to pay the price of being Christian. Long before 
the end, Amelia Josephine Burr put these pointed questions 
in her poem 'The Great Victory" : 

"Thinking of your wasted land, can you leave that land un- 

wasted? 
Vengeance' cup within your hand, can you put it by untasted ? 
With the tortures of your living and the faces of your dead 
Branded in you past forgiving, can you leave the curse un- 
said?"^ 

As in criminology we have passed from punishment as 
vengeance, through control for the sake of correction, to the 
ideal of complete reclamation of the criminal and his incor- 
poration in a society reformed to induce less crime, so the 
question comes to nations whether motives of vengeance shall . 
be supreme, or whether reformed criminal nations shall be 
received back into a reformed society of peoples. 

W^ill nations that have the power to control raw materials 
be willing, as the British Labour Party suggested, that sys- 
tematic arrangements be made on an international basis for 
the distribution of available raw material to the different 
countries, in proportion to their several pressing needs, rather 
than to their purchasing power? And will the governments 
in each country be willing to maintain control of the most 
indispensable commodities, in order that the richer classes 
may not appropriate them in a competitive market according 
to their means, but that they may be systematically distributed 
on the principle of "no cake for anyone until all have bread"? 



' The Silver Trumpet," p. 127. 

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[VIII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

Jesus was giving no external, universal, and literal rules 
when he said to turn the other cheek, to go the two miles, 
to let the greatcoat go also, and to lend. But he was indicating 
a principle that, whether in private or in national life, has 
been all too little tried. There is unquestionably something 
reformative about friendship that goes forth in service be- 
yond the demands of mere justice. It costs to do this indi- 
vidually. It would be still harder for 2. nation to rise high 
enough to adopt this method. The spirit back of this method 
— the readiness to undergo cost to self in order to produce a 
transformation in an evildoer — is universally incumbent on 
us. The adaptation of the highest personal ethics to the 
national realm will cause many an old shibboleth to be laid 
aside. 

VII 

It is right that one should with steady gaze count the cost 
of being a Christian. Yet the notable fact is that experience 
has proved that those who have most truly paid the cost have 
been least conscious of the sacrifice. 'Tor the joy that was 
set before him, endured the cross, despising shame" (Heb. 
12:2) — this was Christ's way of triumphing over trial. Paul 
kept his eye upon the goal which was so glorious, so impelling 
that he could say : ''Forgetting the things whiclf are behind 
and stretching forward to the th-ings which are before, I press 
on toward the goal, unto the prize of the high calling of 
God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13, 14). 

In comparison with a great goal and a high purpose, sacri- 
fice is as nothing. 'T never made a sacrifice," said Hudson 
Taylor in later years, looking back over a life in which to an 
unusual extent this element had predominated. Hudson Tay- 
lor found that the compensations that followed any apparent 
sacrifice were so real and lasting that he "came to see that 
giving up is inevitably receiving when one is dealing heart 
to heart with God." 

Similarly Livingstone said : 'T do not mention these priva- 
tions as if I considered them to be sacrifices ; for I think 
that the word ought never to be applied to anything we can 
do for Him who came down from heaven and died for us." 
And again, 'Tf God, in his great mercy, lead me in His way, 
to me there is little worth living for but the going onward 
with His blessed work. Of course it is wrong to risk one's 

174 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-c] 

life, but to carry one's life in one's hand is what other soldiers, 
besides those of the Cross, do habitually." 

John Coleridge Patteson, the famous English oarsman, who 
was murdered by South Sea Islanders, thus winning the name 
''Martyr of Melanesia," spoke as follows of the kind of person 
needed for world service: "Earnest, bright, cheerful fellows, 
without that notion of 'making sacrifices' so perpetually occur- 
ring to their minds, would be invaluable. You know the kind 
of men, who have got rid of the conventional notion that more 
self-denial is needed for a missionary than for a sailor or 
soldier, who are sent anywhere and leave home and country 
for years, and think nothing of it because they go on duty." 

It is possible to draw stimulus out of the very difficulties 
of the work and to think of hardships as things not to be 
endured but to be ignored. Much depends on the attitude we 
bring to our task and the devotion with which we pursue it. 
The soldiers at the front did not talk of sacrifice. "Bad luck, 
old fellow, you have been hard hit," said a companion in 
arms to an unshaved peasant picked up by an ambulance in 
France, both arms gone. "No, I gave my life to France. She 
has taken only my arms." Wealthy, cultured women, who 
never did a day's work in their lives, were seen in the canteens 
scrubbing floors and serving tables. "Sacrifice?" they ex- 
claimed. "We are happier than we have ever been before." 

Can one doubt that the loving life is vastly more satisfying 
than the selfish life can ever be? In spite of difficulties, hard- 
ships, and trials, the life spent for others is even here and now 
infinitely more rich and significant than a selfish life can 
possibly be. The Christian knows that selfishness is an inevi- 
table limitation of life, and love just as inevitably is its 
enlargement. 

Then, too, are we going even to name the hardships of 
the peaceful spread of the democracy of God in the presence 
of those who have given their lives for its spread through 
war? Ten score Christians from the West were martyred 
during the first century of Protestant missions in China, but 
that is as nothing compared with the toll of consecrated lives 
taken by a single day's fighting in France. We were told 
about a mother, with three sons killed in battle, who with 
radiant face gave her fourth to face wounds and death at 
country's call. Why, then, should a Christian mother flinch 
from allowing her child to make a peaceful journey overseas 

175 



[VIII-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

to undertake constructive work of exceptional scope and 
power for the highest of world enterprises? If it was not 
waste for the flower of our colleges to die for democracy, is 
it waste for the best to live for the extension of that which 
alone can niake democracy safe? In the presence of the 
millions who have lived the stern and simple life in order that 
Red Cross and Liberty Loans may be supported, we blush to 
mention the paltry sum of one dollar and twenty-two cents 
which is, at present, the average church member's contribution 
to the Kingdom overseas. We have been living at a time 
when men saw that it is quality of life, not quantity, that really 
matters ; when death was but an incident in the great fact 
of eternal life; when the very indifference to human flesh 
made men assured that there was something vastly more. 
Men at the front had it out with death ; they counted the cost ; 
and were living from high principle and sense of sacred duty. 
By all means, let us be ready to pay the cost of being a 
Christian, but let us not be over conscious of the cost. 

What the noblest souls crave is not recognition of their 
sacrifice, but that the cause for which they suffered shall be 
upheld and carried forward. Just this is the cry voiced by 
Colonel John McCrae : 

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow 
Between the crosses, row on row 
That mark our place ; and in the sky 
The larks, still bravely singing, fly 
Scarce heard, amidst the guns below. 
We are the dead. Short days ago 
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe ! 
To you, from failing hands, we throw 
The torch. Be yours to hold it high. 
If ye break faith with us who die 
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 
In Flanders fields." 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

I. "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the 
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." If some person should 

176 



READINESS TO PAY THE COST [VIII-c] 

say to you that this in the mouth of a modern church member 
is pure cant, how would you meet his criticism? 

2. What does the modern Christian lose and what does he 
gain by professing Christianity? 

3. What did Christ teach that his disciples should lose and 
should gain? 

4. Do the last two questions indicate that Christianity is at 
its core selfish? How could you show that it is not? 

5. Give some example of where appeal to heroism has 
brought a great response. 

6. Give several illustrations of progress that has come (a) 
without sacrifice, (b) with sacrifice. 

7. What did it cost Israel as a nation to become ready for 
international service? In Egypt? In the wilderness? As a 
kingdom? In captivity? After the Restoration? 

8. In what ways have we as a nation paid the cost of prepa- 
ration for international service? 



177 



CHAPTER IX 

A Sense of Vocation 

Resolve, power, fruitfulness develop in that life which is 
conscious of a call from God. No Christian can come to his 
greatest world significance without a keen sense of close 
personal relationship to God and of ready response to his will. 

As we look through the Old and New Testaments we find 
God laying his hand on one man after another, calling him to 
some special task — for each piece of work is special for some 
man. Now it is a herdsman, now a courtier, who is called — 
men who, like the disciples, come from every rank of society 
and possess all grades of ability. The Bible shows us how 
God has used men and women of every kind to do his will 
and gives us the assurance that he is still calling helpers of 
the most varied kind. The world Christian will not be one 
to drift into his place in life, but will be ready to fulfil the 
conditions which will enable him to perceive his vocation from 
God. 

Ninth Week, First Day: Abraham — A Call to 
Enlarged Horizons 

By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go 
out unto a place which he was to receive for an inherit- 
ance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 
By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, 
as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac 
and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. . . . 
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, 
but having seen them and greeted them from afar. — Heb. 
II : 8, 9, 13. 

There is something distinctly modern in the way in which 
Abraham was called forth to "a land not his own." The 
pressure came on him to break with old ties, old associations, 
old ways of life, and set out for another land. Such a call still 

178 



A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-i] 

comes literally to those world Christians who, as missionaries 
or as pioneers in commerce, feel led to serve God in other 
lands. They, too, know what it is to set one's face toward 
a distant and unfamiliar land. But in another way this call 
comes to each of us, not necessarily to change our abode or 
our outward mode of life, but to enlarge our horizon, to live 
in interest and imagination in other lands than our own. It 
was no easy matter for Abraham to set out fromi the old, 
familiar, luxuriant life of nature and of man on that rich 
alluvial land between the Tigris and Euphrates. May we on 
our part not hesitate, when we hear God's call, to enter 
through knowledge and sympathy into lands that are not our 
own. 

We note, furthermore, that ''he went out, not knowing 
whither he went." These are the circumstances under which 
God's call often comes to us. We have an unmistakable feel- 
ing that God is leading us away from our present manner of 
life or our present plans. The direction we are to take is 
plain, but what that direction is to lead to is by no means 
plain. It took faith for Abraham and it still takes faith for 
any man to launch out from old moorings when the next 
port is unknown. Faith rises to the highest when without 
sight we obey — when we follow truth and righteousness with- 
out fear as to the Spirit's leading. The significant factor in 
such situations is the confidence that there is Someone who is 
going along as guide. 

"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead thou me on ! 
The night is dark, and I am far from home; 

Lead thou me on ! 
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see 
The distant scene — one step enough for me." 

But the most striking clause in these verses is the following : 
^'Abraham, when he was called, obeyed." Back of this simple 
sentence are some fundamentals that should characterize every 
world Christian of the present day. It is plain that Abraham 
was in touch with God ; he was living so that he could hear 
the call ; it was a natural and normal thing for God to speak ; 
and when God had once spoken, there was unhesitating 
obedience. An imperative need- in these days is that each 

179 



[IX-2] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

one should have a vivid realization of God. If God does 
not seem close to you now — even if you have never had this 
experience — remember that this is your birthright as a child 
of God. And if response to the inward leading is hard, recall 
that long line since Abraham whose ears have caught the 
voice of the living God. After so many examples of faith 
down through the ages, it ought to be easier for us than for 
the man of Ur to detect and to trust the still small voice 
within. 

Ninth Week, Second Day : Gideon — A Call to Those 
Who Criticize • 

And the angel of Jehovah came, and sat under the oak 
which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the 
Abiezrite: and his son Gideon was beating out wheat in 
the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. And the 
angel of Jehovah appeared unto him, and said unto him, 
Jehovah is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. And 
Gideon said unto him. Oh, my lord, if Jehovah is with 
us, why then is all this befallen us? and where are all his 
wondrous works which our fathers told us of, saying, Did 
not Jehovah bring us up from Egypt? but now Jehovah 
hath cast us off, and delivered us into the hand of Midian. 
And Jehovah looked upon him, and said. Go in this thy 
might, and save Israel from the hand of Midian: have 
not I sent thee? And he said unto him, Oh, Lord, where- 
with shall I save Israel? behold, my family is the poorest 
in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. 
And Jehovah said unto him. Surely I will be with thee, 
and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. . . . But 
the Spirit of Jehovah came upon Gideon; and he blew a 
trumpet; and Abiezer was gathered together after him. — 
Judges 6: 11-16, 34. 

Could any paragraph be more full of complaint and doubt 
than Gideon's first response to the angel? "li Jehovah is with 
us" seems to indicate some doubt as to God's continued care. 
What other explanation was there of all that had befallen 
them? "And where are all his wondrous works" definitely 
raises the question of God's present interest or power. "But 
now Jehovah hath cas-t us off'* seems as definitely to be the 
expression of one who had lost his faith in God's dependable- 
ness. 

And yet something else was there — righteous indignation, 

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A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-2] 

courage, sympathy with his fellow-Israelites, and a longing to 
help. These were really signs of God's presence in his life, 
and Gideon had not learned to interpret them. For God is not 
a far-away, external being. The very faith and hope and 
love within us are tokens of Jehovah's presence, unrecognized 
and unreleased though he may be. 

Yet somehow in the midst of his impetuous criticism, 
Gideon became aware that he had a part to play in making 
conditions right. The call came to the complainer to become 
the helper — "Go in this thy might and save Israel." Then 
the excuses began. When he saw that he had a definite rela- 
tionship to the meeting of the need of his nation, he pleaded 
his own unfitness and inadequacy, the obscurity of his family, 
his own lack of all prestige. How many times we find our- 
selves, like Gideon, pessimistic, laying blame on others, gen- 
erally discontented with the way the world is going, even 
doubting whether God is very much interested in us after all. 
If we stopped to listen, do you not think that we, too, would 
hear God calling us to take a hand, to do our part to make 
things right? 

And then when God had opened up the vision of our own 
individual responsibility as world Christians in all the great- 
ness of his thought for us, we would be very likely to say : "O, 
what experience have I had? Who am I to attempt this? 
Nobody knows me. Even amongst my friends no one has 
picked me out as great." Here we must learn Gideon's lesson. 
God was not sarcastic in following up his complaints with, 
"Go in this thy might and save Israel." God really saw in 
Gideon, as in all of us, capacity that he could use. The very 
explosion of complaint showed an underlying solicitude for 
the highest welfare of his people. But in calling Gideon God 
knew that there was something more than any might that 
was in Gideon himself. ''Have not I sent thee?" Under these 
circumstances was it not clear that Gideon could count on 
being empowered above his natural strength? ''Surely I will 
be with thee." Here is the justification of the humblest of 
us in attempting the greatest task to which God calls us. 
Without this assurance, how dare we launch out at all? 

The final secret of Gideon's strength is found in the last 
verse of our reading. The margin puts it, "The spirit of the 
Lord clothed itself with Gideon." If the part God is calling 
you to play in the world's work seems overwhelmingly greater 

181 



[IX-3] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

than you are fitted for, remember that God is ever clothing 
himself upon those who heed when he says : ''Have not I sent 
thee? Surely I will be with thee." 

Ninth Week, Third Day: Amos— A Call to the 
Unconventional 

Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no 
prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was a herds- 
man, and a dresser of sycomore-trees: and Jehovah took 
me from following the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, 
Go, prophesy unto my people Israel. — Amos 7: 14, 15. 

This desert-trained man of Tekoa was able to hear a call 
which led him to break over the conventions of his time and 
become the founder of a new order of prophecy. Heretofore 
there had been guilds of men, ''sons of the prophets," as they 
were called, who made their living by prophesying. To the 
insinuation of Amaziah that Amos was a professional and 
could work wherever expediency dictated, Amos replied that 
something higher than custom or gain was directing his life. 

Could an3^thing have been more unexpected? Here was a 
herdsman of desert sheep, a ''pincher" of a lig-like fruit 
eaten only by the poor ! Yet God called him, w^ith all his rude 
attire and serious face, to confront the self-indulgent luxury 
and the immorality of the Northern Kingdom. 

Are we to draw the conclusion that education and training 
are not essential for God's service? No, but we may see how 
he has many ways of fitting men to do his will. The solitude j 
of the fields and plains of Judah was the school of Amos. \ 
Can you possibly have had less opportunity? 

While he was engaged in his regular work, God's call came , 
to him. No one could call his new task a pleasing one. To \ 
charge men of position with injustice and oppression; to sound ^ 
God's doom upon the indifference of the people was scarcely 
an inviting or a hopeful venture. But the basal fact was j 
that God had chosen him, and that meant unhesitating obedi- \ 
ence. 

Some of us are poor, untrained as universities count train- 
ing, and living away from the centers of power or luxury. 
Let us remember that God has schools of many kinds and that 
the world has a crying need for those who possess clear, un- 
clouded moral judgment and have hearts attuned to catch 

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A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-4] 

the mind of God. Let your meditations go out, as did those 
of Amos, to kingdoms that are not your own. Give inter- 
national scope to your spiritual hunger and insight and con- 
victions, as did this humble desert herdsman. Be not abashed 
or unfaithful, if God takes you from behind the flock. 

Ninth Week, Fourth Day: Isaiah — Beholding the 
Spiritually Real 

In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sit- 
ting upon a throne, high and Ufted up; and his train filled 
the temple. Above him stood the seraphim: each one had 
six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain 
he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one 
cried unto another, and said. Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah 
of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the 
foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him 
that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then 
said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man 
of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of 
unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, Jehovah 
of hosts. 

Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a 
live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs 
from off the altar: and he touched my mouth with it, 
and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity 
is taken away, and thy sin forgiven. And I heard the 
voice of the Lord, saying. Whom shall I send, and who 
will go for us? Then I said, Here am I; send me. And 
he said. Go, and tell this people. Hear ye indeed, but un- 
derstand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. — Isa. 
6:1-9. 

If world friendship is to be most significant, there must 
have come to us as to Isaiah a vision of the great realities 
back of our visible world. To the ancient prophet came a 
very vivid realization of God in all his majesty and exaltation. 
He saw God as a great king on his throne. About him were 
beings alive to his glory and ever ready to serve him. Behind 
the visible, Isaiah saw activity, service, and appreciation all 
centering in God. This world will never have its fullest 
meaning for us until we, too, can see God back of everything, 
and are impelled to join in the praise, "Holy, holy, holy, is 
Jehovah of hosts." 

Very true to our own experience is what followed. How 

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[IX-5] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

often have we begun our prayer with praise and adoration of 
our Father. As our minds dwelt on his purity, his holiness, his 
love, his character, a sense of our own unworthiness has 
almost inevitably come over us, and we have passed naturally 
into confession. With Isaiah we acknowledge that we are 
men with unclean lips. 

But we never see God in his fulness if our experience 
stops here. For, since Jesus revealed the Father, each one 
of us may have the wonderful sense of forgiveness and 
cleansing that was pictured by Isaiah as a seraph touching 
his lips with a live coal, so that his iniquity was taken away 
and his sin purged. Normal prayer still passes through the 
stages of adoration, thanksgiving, confession with a sense of 
forgiveness, and on to aspiration and petition. 

Prepared in such a way, Isaiah was able to perceive the 
same call that is coming to every individual today. The world 
that we see is out of harmony with the world that lies back 
of it. Conditions as they are, come short of conditions as 
God wants them to be. A great insistent need is ever present. 
And most of us do not see this need, nor hear the call, nor 
find our place and mission in the world! The call to be 
world Christians comes when we have caught some vision 
of the contrast between what seems to be, and what through 
God can be ; and when we have become aware of that wonder- 
ful freedom and release of powers and energies which result 
from forgiveness and cleansing. We are living in a busy 
age when it is easy to leave God out of account. Why not 
definitely determine to fulfil the conditions which may bring 
to us, as to Isaiah, the life-transforming vision of the glory 
and the reality of our God? 

Ninth Week, Fifth Day: Jeremiah — Inspiration 
from a Planned Life 

Now the word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, Be- 
fore I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before 
thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I 
have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations. Then 
said I, Ah, Lord Jehovah! behold, I know not how to 
speak; for I am a child. But Jehovah said unto me. Say 
not, I am a child; for to whomsoever I shall send thee 
thou shalt go, and whatsoever I shall command thee 
thou shalt speak. Be not afraid because of them; for 

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A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-5] 

I am with thee to deliver thee, saith Jehovah. Then 
Jehovah put forth his hand, and touched my mouth; and 
Jehovah said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in 
thy mouth: see, I have this day set thee over the nations 
and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down 
and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant. — 
Jer. 1:4-10. 

To be selected at all by God for a certain task would seem 
to be assurance enough. But somehow there comes to us 
an added confidence, when we know that the choice has been 
of long standing. Jeremiah must have felt the definiteness 
and urgency of the call all the more, when told that this had 
been God's thought for him from his very birth. 

If the very hairs of our heads are numbered, if not a 
sparrow falls to the ground without the Father's knowing it,, 
if God takes interest in the individual as a woman in a lost 
coin or a shepherd in a lost sheep, then may the assurance 
that came to Jeremiah be ours as well. We, too, are not here 
by chance, and the investment of our lives is not a matter 
of indifference. God has sanctified us from the very begin- 
ning for some task that awaits our doing. 

Those of older years know how true this is to experience. 
As we traversed life's way the path did not always seem 
plain. Sometimes we were turned from a goal we had set 
for ourselves by some slight failure or apparent lack of oppor- 
tunity. And then later on would come an opening we had 
not sought, the gentle inward pressure would urge us toward 
this open door, and a host of things in our past lives would 
fall into their places, showing how all along we were being 
fitted for this very thing. We are often strengthened to take 
up an unexpected and difficult task by perceiving how the 
past has been a preparation for the new call of God. Joseph,, 
in Egypt, looking back over his life could reassure his 
brothers and say : "So now it was not you that sent me hither, 
but God" (Gen. 45:8). 

By no means a general, but yet a very natural, experience 
in the face of some great call of God is the feeling of inade- 
quacy, of immaturity. Moses felt it. Gideon felt it. Jonah 
and Jeremiah had it. To us in our day comes doubt as to^ 
health, the capacity for guiding men, the courage to endure 
hardship, the power to acquire a foreign language. This 
sense of disproportion between task and agent does not come, 

185 



IIX-6] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

however, to everyone. But to all alike can come the rich 
assurance that God is with us, that we do not enter upon the 
task alone. Within us is the Source of life, within us is the 
Kingdom of God; all needed power is available. The great 
Pilot will send us where we are to go ; he will give us words 
to speak; he will outline our task as the days go on. 

Many a Christian has responded to a call with just such 
faith as God asked Jeremiah to have, and what have seemed 
like veritable miracles have resulted. In these days, mo- 
mentous with need and opportunity, the v/orld Christian 
may well shrink before complicated situations, delicate adjust- 
ments, unprecedented tasks. Let such a one read over many 
times God's promise to Jeremiah and apply its principle to 
himself. 

Ninth Week, Sixth Day: Paul — Courage from 
Life's Interpretation 

It was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, 
even from my mother's womb, and called me through his 
grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him 
among the Gentiles. 

For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet 
to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church 
of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am. 

But thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in 
triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the 
savor of his knowledge in every place. — Gal. i: 15; I Cor. 
15*9, 10; II Cor. 2: 14. 

Paul, also, had the conviction that came to Jeremiah, namely, 
that he had been set apart by God from his birth for a certain 
task. See how closely his very words parallel those of Jere- 
miah. This assurance is borne in upon him as he looks back 
in reflection upon the incidents of his life. In this conscious- 
ness of mission, Paul was like his Master who said: "To this 
end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the 
world" (John 18:37). ^ 

The additional stimulus we gain from Paul's vocation is in 
noting what a source of confidence and hope and assurance 
it is to him. The very difficulty of the task of transforming 
Saul the persecutor into Paul the apostle makes him feel that 
God must have had a purpose through him which he does not 

186 



A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-7] 

mean should fail. When Paul sees how the pride of a bigoted 
Pharisee has been humbled, how deeply-ingrained prejudices 
have been overcome, how a blasphemer of the Christ has been 
transformed, and an ardent persecutor of Christians led to 
be an apostle, he renews his courage. Such obstacles would 
not have been overcome unless God were very definitely 
meaning to use his life. 

Are there not many of us who may find a source of strength 
and comfort for our further life in just such a reflection on 
the way God has brought us to where we are? For us to be 
where and what we are seems nothing less than a miracle. 
Are we going to disappoint God who has brought us thus far? 
Or shall we go on with him, realizing that '"by the grace of 
God I am what I am"? As the Children of Israel took cour- 
age from rehearsing Jehovah's providences throughout their 
history and loved to speak of him as the God of Abraham, 
of Isaac, and of Jacob, so may we take strength from thinking 
of God as the one who has brought us through the particular 
life-history we have had. As we stand here today, faced 
possibly with some difficult task, confronted it may be by 
some open door through which we see a career that seems 
beyond our power, let us be assured that God does not at this 
late point in our career mean that failure should come to his 
design for us. Surely we may have faith in him who has 
led us thus far. 



Ninth Week, Seventh Day: The Heritage of 
Christ's Chosen 

And the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own 
sheep by name, and leadeth them out. When he hath 
put forth all his own, he goeth before them, and the sheep 
follow him: for they know his voice. — John 10:3, 4. 

Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed 
you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit 
should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father 
in my name, he may give it you. — John 15: 16. 

It was a big, practical world task that Jesus came to ac- 
complish, and each one of us is called to join in the work. 
None of us are to have self-chosen tasks, for Jesus has no 
uncalled servants. He has chosen and appointed each with a 

187 



;[IX-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

purpose. In these verses one may renew again his conviction 
that God thinks of each as an individual and again may deepen 
his sense of personal call. 

And what more inspiring goal for life could there be than 
the promises he gives to those who respond to his choosing — a 
productive life, work of eternal significance, and spiritual 
insight so that asking from God shall mean receiving? 



COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



As leaves driven about by an autumn wind settle down 
without any inherent force or guidance, so all too many are 
blown into their places by the force of mere circumstance 
Chance-directed imitation determines the life-work; somQ 
fancy as to expected rewards determines the profession ; or 
possibly the sheer force of gravity makes one drop down in 
an unreflective way into a certain niche. Thousands of edu- 
cated men and women, themselves Christian and members of 
Christian communities, are slow to realize that they have any 
responsibility for conditions in the world, and settle down 
haphazard, with no alertness or expectation of a call from 
God. Efficiency experts tell us that seven out of every ten 
men are wrongly placed, and that most men are utilizing only 
about one-third of their mental and spiritual force. This 
condition of maladjustment and of indifferent drift is due in 
part to the fact that men and women are not interpreting 
their life-work in terms of God's will. 

The word, "called," has become too narrowed in its applica- 
tion. It seems all right to speak of a man being "called" to 
the ministry, or "called" to be a foreign missionary; but we 
rarely think of a person as being called to be a banker, or 
diplomat, or merchant, or teacher. On the other hand the 
word "vocation" has lost much of the sacredness of its 
original meaning, so that one even hears the phrase "choosing 
•one's vocation," as though you could choose that to which 
you are called. We are right in applying the word "vocation" 
to all work of whatever kind, which Christians do in response 
to God's guidance, but we are wrong in leaving out of our 
consciousness the original implication of the word — that God 
has a purpose for every single one of his children. That you 

i88 



1 



A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-c] 

do not recognize the vocation or call from God does not mean 
that he has no plan. For even of Cyrus God could say, "I 
girded thee, though thou hast not known me" (Isa. 45:5). 
Consciously or unconsciously God is girding you for some 
specific work, in the doing of which you will find your highest 
self-realization and the world will receive its greatest service. 

II 

There is one primary and universal call, however, that comes 
to every Christian. Until one has heard this and responded 
absolutely to it one can hardly be in the proper frame of 
mind or heart to entertain any more specific call. The uni- 
versal vocation is that we submit our spirits to the one end 
of developing a perfected society made up of Christ-like per- 
sonalities. Jesus put it this way: ''Seek ye first the kingdom 
of God." Blessed is that youth who, at student conference 
or in the quiet influence of a Christian home, has found God's 
Spirit pressing home on him the primary obligation of conse- 
crating his life — no matter in what concrete expression — to 
the service of God. This is the great and fundamental de- 
cision of one's life. The simple yet momentous questions are 
just these: ''Will I accept God's call to live for him, and 
make this consideration dominating? Is there anything that 
will really count more for the world than for me to do the 
will of God? Is there any task more supreme than finding 
out his plan and yielding myself to its fulfilment?" 

You may choose your life-work yourself and then decide 
to serve God as well as you can through this activity. Or 
you may decide to serve God unhesitatingly and absolutely, 
whatever this may involve, and in particular even in the 
specific life-work that he shall open up. There is a vast 
difference between these two procedures. To choose our work 
first and then to decide to serve God as best we can in this 
work is reversing the order approved by Jesus. It is not 
enough that we make the decision to serve God faithfully in 
the place where we are. For that place itself should be de- 
termined by his call to us. Our specific life-work will absorb 
most of our energy. It is supremely important that this great 
outflow of life shall be along the course he has chosen for 
our life. Mackay, an engineer in Scotland, held that his life 
had been given to him to use for Christ. That question once 



[IX-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

settled, it was not difficult for him, when the information was 
before him, to decide to use his engineering talent in Uganda. 

Ill 

But we are not to assume that such a primal decision will 
land each person on the foreign field, for God's calls are many 
in kind. It may mean a vocation right here at home, identify- 
ing our lives in residential friendship with the immigrants 
or the mountaineers of some needy section of our own coun- 
try different from our own. It may mean sharing our privi- 
leges with communities from amongst our 12,000,000 fellow- 
citizens of a darker skin. For some mother it may mean 
opening the door of her home to foreign students for simple 
Christian fellowship about the hearth-fire. Our tcountry is 
full of opportunity to stand against class opposition and to 
show, through practical deeds as well as attitude of mind, 
the truth that we are members one of another. God may call 
some to be teachers, religious educational directors, organ- 
izers of a federated church movement, or to take up medicine, 
commerce, trade, or art. "Every tree is a challenge to us," 
says our Secretary of the Interior, "and every pool of water 
and every foot of soil. The mountains are our enemies. We 
must pierce them and make them serve. The wilful rivers 
we must curb ; and out of the seas and air renew the life of 
the earth itself." 

Any one of these works, so necessary for the welfare of 
society, is just as worthy as the other — providing one is called 
to it. One can be a world Christian in the smallest hamlet 
of America. Reading, prayer, giving, all the. manifold forms 
of holding the ropes for those who have gone abroad, are 
w^ays in which one may express one's interest in the world. 
"It seems as if some were called to China, or Africa, or India, 
for God, and others were called no less truly to God for 
China, or Africa, or India, or rather for the world." Their 
place may be at home; their work can be for the world. For 
those who stay and those who go, "the field is the world" — 
not the distant portions only, but the whole. 

And even if one feels called to go abroad, there are many 
channels, into any one of which your call may lead you. Some 
will be serving God in sugar or rubber plantations in Cuba 
or South America ; others will be building bridges in Burma ; 
another will be a dentist in Kashmir. Consulates, banks, 

190 



A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-c] 

commercial posts, educational positions make their legitimate 
call as well as does that magnificent vocation — ambassadorship 
for Christ. 

What we are here trying to say is that this primary and 
fundamental decision to serve God absolutely and^ to use our 
lives for his glory, does not necessarily settle the question 
of the specific channel through which our lives are to flow. 
Any one who has read the lives of Nicholson or General 
Gordon or the books of Donald Hankey can see how these 
men served God nobly through the soldier's life abroad. 
Anyone who has read of Edwardes of Peshawar or of John 
and Henry Lawrence of the Panjab has obtained inspiring 
glimpses into lives that put the Kingdom first as administra- 
tors of the British Government in India. The Japanese em- 
ployed Captain L. L. Janes as an educator, but the wonderful 
Kumamoto Band — a group of students who came to be among 
Japan's most distinguished Christians — was sufficient evidence 
as to where his primal loyalty was. What a tremendous gain 
for the Kingdom would it be if every man from our Christian 
homes and schools who went abroad in commercial, govern- 
mental, or professional tasks felt the call of Christ to witness 
for him in these posts, by word and deed and life. 

Here we can well learn from Muhammadanism. Its most 
characteristic method of expansion is found in the zeal of the 
individual believer. No profession or occupation unfits the 
believer to be a preacher of the iaith ; it is, in fact, the 
trader who takes the largest place in Muslim propaganda. 
In a list of Muhammadan missionaries, published by an In- 
dian paper in Lahore, we find the names of schoolmasters, 
government clerks in the canal and opium departments, trad- 
ers, including a dealer in camel carts, a newspaper editor, a 
bookbinder, and the like. Some would even say that every 
Muslim is a missionary. 

While the universal call that comes to every Christian to 
place his life absolutely at God's disposal by no m.eans involves 
going as a missionary to the foreign fields, yet, with needs 
and opportunities as they are, this specific call is certainly a 
possibility. And at this point let us make sure that we do 
not claim any exemption. This original and primary com- 
mitment to God's service does certainly involve a willingness 
to go, if that should prove to be his will. Readiness to do 
missionary work ought not to be considered an utterly unre- 

191 



[IX-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

lated affair which one may decide at will irrespective of the 
primary commitment of his life. Once enlisted as a soldier, 
one may not claim exemption from service in Mexico or 
overseas. 

And yet there is something harsh about these phrases — 
surrender, commitment, enlistment, relinquishment of all ex- 
emption. They come from an age when democratic ideals 
were not so pervasive. The whole question of call needs to 
be restated in other terms, giving up the arbitrary, military, 
domineering aspect of these phrases, and bringing out Christ's 
conception that we are not servants, but friends, so that the 
relationship is much more personal, cooperative, and social. 

IV 

When once we have accepted as our call a participation in 
the recovery and the perfection of the whole life of all man- 
kind, the discovery of the particular hit of work that any indi- 
vidual should do would seem to be a simpler matter. But 
who of us has not at times felt baffled in the search to know 
with surety just what God would have us do, even when we 
were willing to be led? Our whole conception of God as 
Father, however, assures one that the individual who seeks 
guidance can count on arriving at his vocation. To each man 
or woman the knowledge of God's will may come in different 
terms, but in one of the many ways that his sheep hear his 
voice, the great Shepherd will speak to you. It may be 
through some speaker in conference or church ; or it may be 
a flash of illumination as you read God's Word. It may be 
some silent inward urge, in the presence of which every other 
course feels wrong; or it may be the compulsion of external 
forces shaping one's life. To some it will come as a challenge 
to do the apparently impossible ; to others it will mean the 
faithful continuance in still and quiet waters. Light may 
spring up suddenly ; possibly it will be a purely rational de- 
cision. Or the next step, only, may be given — "Rise and enter 
into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do" 
(Acts 9:6). But we may be confident that in one way or 
another we shall know what to do when the time comes for 
decision, if we are true to the conditions. A few principles, 
however, may help us in this great life problem that faces 
every one. 

Life is not made up of a single choice. For most people 

192 



A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-c] 

life's course does not follow plainly from a single specific call. 
Most of our lives contain a succession of decisions. Ability 
to discern these inward leadings is an attainment and the habit 
of sensitive response to them can be built up only through 
repeated acts of the will. No one can read Paul's life without 
noticing how his will continuously placed itself in line with 
God's, as a compass needle comes to rest on the meridian. 
He wanted to go to Bithynia, but "the Spirit of Jesus suffered 
them not" ; he is "forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the 
word in Asia" (Acts i6 : 6, 7) ; he goes to Macedonia as a 
result of a call; he feels a definite inward command to stay 
in Corinth and not be afraid. 

No wonder some are blind and confused when finally the 
big choice of their life-work comes. They are like a wireless 
receiving station to which the meaningful waves are coming 
all right, but in which the coherer or receiving apparatus has 
not been placed. They have not developed the capacity to 
hear spiritually. If it takes practice to develop skill in the 
detection and interpretation of distant objects on the sea 
that may prove to be hostile craft; if an airman must be 
specially trained to interpret the strange landscape presented 
from the sky; is it not natural that we must acquire through 
constant practice the ability to sense God's direction of our 
lives? We are expected so to use our gifts that we may be 
able to see when and where we are called to branch out into 
a new path. No one else may be able to recognize the guid- 
ance that comes to you; but you must have so lived and lis- 
tened that you will know when to leave the old and take up 
the new. 

This simply means that we must prepare for great choices 
by being faithful in little ones. Only as we habitually seek 
to interpret the purpose of God and regard our life through- 
out as a continuous trust from him, can we fittingly prepare 
ourselves for the great decisions when they come. Thus liv- 
ing, we shall sometime be able to say: 

*T heard him call 
'Come, follow,' that was all. 
My gold grew dim. 
My soul went after him. 
I rose and followed, that was all. 
Who would not follow if he heard his call?" 

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[IX-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

The detection of God's will zmth surencss is also a social 
affair. The more nearly the family, the church, and society 
are interpreting their functions in the light of vocation, the 
more the corporate aspect of human life is Christian in its 
outlook and attitudes, the greater will be the certainty that 
the individual will be able to make a fine adjustment to God's 
will. In developing individual harmony with God's purpose, 
as in so many other things, we find ourselves involved with 
others. Social harmony with God's will and individual har- 
mony must progress together. 

It is a comfort, furthermore, to remember that in the social 
group of which we are a part there is One who is more inter- 
ested than all the rest in our arriving at a true perception of 
our vocation. We do not need to think of ourselves as alone 
in this effort to find out the will of God. The greatest per- 
sonality in the universe is ever joining with us in our effort 
to know his will. 

Why is it that we so seldom come to him with a simple 
childlike prayer for guidance f We have his promise that 
those who ask shall have and that those who seek shall find. 
How can we expect to interpret the fluctuating play of circum- 
stance, or the opening and closing of doors along our path, 
if we do not discipline ourselves through prayer and reflec- 
tion to discern his will? A more frequent request for such 
direction would lead us to go forward on life's way with ever 
deepening reverence. 

We must employ reasonable means of ascertaining facts of 
need and opportunity, if we wish to admit into our lives the 
very material out of which a call comes. Mackay, humanly 
speaking, would not have gone to Uganda if he had not begun 
to read widely on Africa, thus becoming impressed with the 
fact that Aluhammadanism was making its great strides in 
Africa because it carried with it a higher civilization. The 
question came to Mackay, Why should not Christianity carry 
its superior civilization to the blacks? It was not until Han- 
nington resolved to make himself better acquainted with what 
was being done to carry out the will of Christ for the world, 
that he learned of the serious crisis brought about by the 
death of Smith and O'Neil. To this young rector, uncon- 
ventional, athletic, occupying an easy post in England, but 
dead in earnest, this new knowledge proved to be his call. 
James Chalmers in New Guinea became one of the most 

194 



A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-c] 

famous and successful missionaries of modern times. When 
he was still a boy his pastor one Sunday read a description 
of work in the Fiji Islands. This information, along with 
the earnest appeal of the pastor, was the call to Chalmers. 

It is not simply information and perception of need that 
produce the most powerful call. Consciousness of power to 
meet that need forms one of the most appealing elements in 
vocation. Power to meet the need, however, is not to be 
thought of as power merely in one's self. Often utter insuffi- 
ciency is the only consciousness. But there must be enough 
experimental knowledge of God in and through the channel 
of one's life to bring the assurance, "I can do all things in 
him that strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13). The contrast be- 
tween supply on your part and demand on the world's part 
should enter into a person's entrance upon any walk in life. 
Religiously, it is the contrast between the non-Christian world 
both here and abroad and the riches that are in God through 
Christ. It was this that moved Keith-Falconer to go to 
Arabia. ^'Whilst vast continents are shrouded in almost utter 
darkness, and hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of 
heathenism, or of Islam, the burden of proof lies upon you to 
show that the circumstances in which God has placed you 
were meant by him to keep you out of the foreign mission 
field." David Livingstone, after reading Gutzlaff's appeals 
for China, decided to give himself to missionary service. In 
writing to the directors of the London Missionary Society, 
he said : ''At home the population is fairly well supplied, while 
the majority of the population of the world is entirely destitute 
of the means of grace. The greater prospect of usefulness 
and the fact that, even were the present rate of self-dedication 
of qualified persons to that cause greatly augmented, many 
millions must perish without even the chance of hearing the 
glad news of salvation by Christ, would render it imperative 
on me, if qualified, and on all other qualified Christians to 
obey the command of our risen Redeemer." Perception of 
need, willingness to go, and consciousness of something to 
give, are the elements in many a call. 

V 

If, however, we say that world Christians in whatever walk 
or place in life should, just as much as foreign missionaries, 
think of their work as a vocation — that is, as something to 

195 



[IX-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

which they have been called of God — then the same standards 
of consecration and character should be expected of all. The 
spiritual qualifications of a missionary have been worked out 
with some care. We are right in placing a very high standard 
for one who is to be an ambassador of the Church to distant 
peoples. We are wrong in tacitly admitting that any less 
exacting standard should content a member of the same 
church at home. If the plain people of shop and farm and 
trading vessel may rightly regard themselves as called of 
God, if their specific vocations are forms of kingdom work, 
then their tasks require spiritual qualifications also. 

Let us apply some of the standards set up for the foreign 
missionary to our own lives. We are told that the missionary 
should have such a character as shall demonstrate the power 
of Christ in individual life; but is this a qualification from 
which any of us should be released? Missionaries are warned ' 
that the people in non-Christian lands are ready to have their 
bodies cared for and to be helped materially, and that there- 
fore they will be tempted to spend their lives in giving people 
what they are willing to receive, to the neglect of any effort 
to give them what they most need. Is this warning less needed 
by the world Christian at home, engaged in the ministry of 
the farm or shop or office? Missionaries are told that they 
must guard against ''dictatorialness, dogmatic assertiveness, 
slothfulness, spiritual indolence, mere formality of 'service, 
weakening of moral fiber and tone, degeneration of standard 
and ideal for self and others." Are not these equally the 
temptations of those who stay at home? If the missionary 
must maintain his spiritual power by cultivating habits of 
spiritual refreshment, shall we on our part expect to attain 
such habits without conscious effort? If the missionary must 
not let school work, or hospital, or editor's desk distract him 
from personal work with men, pray what releases the Chris- 
tian teacher, doctor, or editor from personal work in this 
land? Almost every missionary is greatly overworked, as 
indeed we feel we are here at home; but is he the only man 
to be expected to make careful adjustment between routine 
and spiritual efficiency? 

Candidates for foreign mission service are told that men 
are wanted who will esteem home and companionship of loved 
ones and ease and pleasant surroundings in such a way as 
not to let these dull God's call to duty. They are told that 

196 



A SENSE OF VOCATION [IX-c] 

they must show a constant willingness to sacrifice, to endure 
hardness, and to hold personal comfort lightly. But why 
should Board secretaries have to apologize for placing the 
qualifications so high? Why are they afraid of discouraging 
the very men and women whom they most want to have go 
abroad? Is it not because the Church has failed to apply a 
spiritual standard to each vocation? The Church in behalf 
of each of its members must turn again to Christ, who said^ 
*'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and 
take up his cross daily, and follow me." 

Now if one is to balance over against a missionary's voca- 
tion of developing the Kingdom another's apparent task of 
making shoes, or selling oil, or designing engines, then un- 
doubtedly the previously enumerated high qualifications seem 
more necessary for the kingdom man than for the shoe- 
maker. But the trouble comes in imagining that anyone is 
called merely to make boots or sell oil or design engines. 
These, also, are called to develop God's Kingdom in and 
through and along with their necessary tasks. Kingdom work 
requires kingdom qualifications. It was because Carey, the 
shoemaker, had them, that he could have them when inaugu- 
rating modern missions in Serampore. When the Church 
expectantly trains each of its members to the attainment of 
such qualifications, it will more rightly conceive its mission. 

As in modern warfare you can scarcely speak of non-com- 
batants, so for the growth of the Kingdom throughout the 
world every man's, woman's, and child's utmost is required. 
There are no peculiar callings in the sense that they alone 
are sacred. Christ is calling many young men and Avomen to 
enter the very center of modern business and political life, 
to fight inefficiency, ignorance, and sin, to grapple with prob- 
lems, with the faith that only a Christian can bring to bear, 
and to witness throughout that life is more than food and 
the body more than raiment. The spiritual qualifications set 
up for the Church's ambassadors abroad are certainly none 
too high for every line of work, if abundant life is the heritage 
of all. The standard for a missionary is certainly very high,, 
but great also is the standard for a Christian business man 
who must work in absolute loyalty to the spirit and principles 
of Christ. The mark of a world Christian in any sphere is 
readiness to face the high demands of his life-work as a 
sacred vocation. 

197 



[IX-c] MARKS OF A WORLD CHRISTIAN 

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 

1. How would you show that Christianity demands that a 
commercial career be regarded as a "vocation," as much as 
the ministry? 

2. To what extent is the foreign representative of a busi- 
ness house under obligations to extend the Kingdom? 

3. What difference is there between calls to military service, 
Red Cross work, winning America to Christ, and winning the 
entire world to Christ? 

4. Criticize the following opinion : "It is not considered 
ethical for missionaries, ministers, physicians, and teachers 
to compete with one another -and seek to put each other out 
of business, or to regard their earnings as their main induce- 
ment to labor. But the manufacturer, the importer, the 
broker, the mechanic, the unskilled laborer, are supposed to 
be influenced by far lower motives. Until we elevate every 
trade and calling to a holy ministry, until the nominally Chris- 
tian merchants who enter the markets of non-Christian lands 
are impelled by the identical motives which send out the mis- 
sionary, the commerce of Christendom is the propaganda of 
an anti-Christian ethic." 

5. Who are God's chosen people today? What would be 
the effect of a general belief that there is a divine plan for 
every nation ? 

6. What matters most — the character of the work, the 
place of the work, or the fact that it is the work to which 
God has called you? 

7. What constitutes a call? 

8. How is a vocation to be discovered? 

9. In what attitude of mind and spirit should the student 
of the purpose of God for his life approach decision? 

10. Which of the nine "marks" which we have been study- 
ing are possessed by a typical trade union? By a typical 
church ? 

11. The Church has had a long history of dealing with 
a great world problem. What are the richest lessons that can 
be drawn from this experience for our world tasks? 



198 



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